Did the Proto-Iberians Come From the Caucasus?

Bible: In Genesis 10 and 1Chronicles 1, the fifth son of the patriarch Japheth is named Tubal and the sixth – is named Meshech.

Roman Literature: In the Septuagint the name is given as Th-obel, and Th-ober in the Codex Alexandrinus (Ezek. 39:1). To the Greeks, the sons of Tubal were the Τ-ιβαρηνοί (T-ibar-enoi); to the Romans they were the T- ibar-eni or T-iber-eni.

Herodotus (Roman historian) says the land of the Tibarenians belonged to the 19th satrapy of Darius the Persian (Histories, III, 94). In VII, 78 we see the T-ibar-enians or T-iber-enians allied with their cousins the Maschians or Meskhians, sons of Meshech. Both peoples were renowned for their archery skills, and the close association of the descendants of Tubal with those of Meshech even to the present day is attested in several of the prophecies in the Bible that have a future fulfillment.

Appian (Roman historian) gives the range of opinion on the two Iberias: ‘As for the Iberians of Asia, some think them descendants of the European Iberians, others think them their ancestors, while others think that they simply share the same name’. (Mithr. 101).

In modern times, scholars have sought to establish a link between the two Moschians: Moschians in South Georgia and North Turkey, and Boschians (Bascians, Bascs) in North Spain and East France. Note the resemblance between “Bascs” and the Basques.

The people, who were later named Iberians (or dwellers along the Rio Ebro) by the Greeks, as well as Bascians, migrated to Iberian Peninsula in the third millennium B.C. The origin of the Iberians and Bascians is not certain, but archaeological evidence of their metallurgical and agricultural skills supports a theory that they came from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The Iberians and Bascians lived in small, tightly knit, sedentary tribal groups that were geographically isolated from one another. Each group developed distinct regional and political identities, and intertribal warfare was endemic.

The Caucasian Iberians (Tiberians) and Maschians (Meskhians) may indeed have come from the Caucasus.

However, later on, there was tremendous Celtic influence as the Celts seem to have overrun the entire peninsula. Nevertheless, as late as 2000-3000 years ago, pre-Roman Iberian languages were spoken all over the peninsula. The remains of these languages are found in many placenames. The languages are isolates, and have no known relatives. It’s possible that they may be related to Basque though.

The Celtic influence can also be seen in many placenames. Celtic influence is profound in Northern Spain, especially in Galicia, Asturias, Calabria, over to the East in Aragon and certainly in Catalonia. Celtic influence is deep in the north of Portugal in a region called Lusitania.

Iberian genes do not show much connection to the Caucasus, but Basque genes do look somewhat Caucasian and are anomalous in Europe. I have studied the Basque language at length and a connection with the languages of the Caucasus, especially Northeast Caucasian languages like Chechen, seems likely to me, but not yet proven.

Not all Europeans are “Indo-Europeans.” They were only the latest wave of White or Caucasian types to move through Europe, and Europe was already heavily populated by little known “Old Europe” types before then. No one knows what these ancient Europeans looked like, but reports say that they were short and had dark hair and dark eyes.

Going back 12,000 years or so, European skulls look like the skulls of modern-day Arabs, and European genes from the same period also look like Arab genes. Whether or not Arabs are White is an interesting question.

A young woman from North Yemen - Southern Saudi Arabia, probably an Ismaili or Zaidi Shia of some sort. The best way to describe someone like this is to say that they are a part of the Mediterranean race of Whites. Probably a desert-adapted version of Meds. This woman is a fairly pure Arabid, probably with little African mixture.

The best answer seems to be that there are White Arabs and Non-White (Caucasian) Arabs.

A White Egyptian girl, characteristic of a White Arab or possibly a White Berber. She could easily be, say, an Italian. White in this case means "looks like a European." Tell a White nationalist that there are some White Arabs. They get really mad!

Whatever they are, if you are European, it looks like Arabs are your grandparents.

Classic Arabid type from an anthropology textbook. Say hello to Grandpa, White man.

Tell that to a White nationalist sometime. It really pisses them off!

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SCs6pSE8_I]

Charming, charming.

The Congressional Black Caucus is ferociously booed on their way into Congress. The booers are teapartiers, and for some very odd reason, 10

At around the same time, the tea partiers yelled, “Faggot!” at Barney Frank.

A White Republican lunatic screamed “Baby killer!” at a White Democratic lunatic, Bart Stupak, on the floor of Congress. Why? Because Stupak is going along with some less restrictive anti-abortion language than the crap he originally put in, and he was supporting the bill.

Seriously, this shit is pitiful. White people are going stark raving nuts in this country. I’m embarrassed of my lack of melanin.

It’s times like this that I must reluctantly agree that the declining White population of America is a good thing in a certain way. 9

They lost this one, and this is just the beginning of the end. The days of Reactionary White America are waning. As Whites decline and non-Whites increase, there will be problems, but we will finally get some good socialist programs here in these benighted United States.

I’ve changed my mind on the health care bill. It sucks, but it’s better than nothing. It’s a progressive change. You figure that anything that every Republican and most of the Blue Dogs in Congress is against has got to be a good thing. 10

So this is the beginning of the Republicans’ Waterloo. They had to kill this. It’s all about ideology. The particulars of the bill are unimportant. In fact! This is nearly a carbon copy of the alternative bill that the Congress Republicans proposed in 1993 during the fight over Clinton Care. Now they’re all lined up against it, over my dead body! What the fuck, Republicans?

But it’s really about what this bill represents. It represents, yes, socialism. It’s a repudiation of neoliberal metaphysics that says that everything of any value in society must come from the market, not from the state. It’s a body blow to neoliberalism and their whole unbridled capitalism, smash the state ideology.

As William Kristol noted in 1993, Clinton Care had to be opposed because it might work, and people would probably like it. And we can’t have people deciding that government programs have good mouth feel. No. Government programs are evil. Government must not be allowed to do anything good. Once people start deciding that government programs are actually fun rides for the average Joe, the Free Market game is up.

Look at how furious the Republicans are! They’re hopping up and down like they’ve got bumblebees up their asses! There’s got to be a reason for that. Screw the specifics, this was all about ideology. And with this defeat, their ideology suffered a devastating blow.

They’re going to run on overturning it in the next election, but I doubt if that will work. But they’re sure to have the entire corporate MSM media behind them all the way. I’d be surprised if one outlet comes out for ObamaCare.

Several state attorney generals are filing suit against the bill, claiming it is unconstitutional. On what basis might this bill be unconstitutional? I can’t see how that’s going to go anywhere.

Worse, there is talk about appealing the bill to the Supreme Assholes of the SCOTUS. Judging from some of their latest rulings, including the corporate money is free speech outrage, possibly the worst ruling since Dred Scott, my heart sinks. These Supremes are just insane enough that they might decide on the usual fraudulent, conjured out of thin air grounds, to overturn the bill. It’s a frightening prospect.

Tea party rallies area about 9

But the White nationalists have made it completely clear on their websites. They are saying what few others will dare to say. Jared Taylor and the Occidental Dissent folks are explicit that ObamaCare is a transfer of wealth from Whites to Blacks and Hispanics. And this is why they oppose it.

Well, of course. .

As with so many things in our society, opposition to ObamaCare is so about race.

Apparent Assassination Attempt Against Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki

There is supposedly a news blackout on this incident, and it is only being reported that Maliki was suddenly rushed to the hospital while the votes for the new election are being held. The Western media is providing no information about why Maliki was suddenly hospitalized. However, Debka is reporting that last Thursday, March 11, Maliki’s convoy was hit first by a bomb, then by RPG and automatic weapons fire.

Maliki was rushed to the nearest hospital, Medical City in Baghdad, with moderate to serious wounds. He is said to be have been injured in the shoulder. The attack occurred somewhere in Baghdad.

Although Debka is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, I think that they are right this time. The times when they are wrong and lying is when the lie is good for the Jews or when the truth is bad for the Jews. Since Maliki has nothing to do with the Jews or Israel (except that the US supports him in Iraq) there is no pro-Israel gain the story, hence no reason for Debka to lie. Debka doesn’t make up lies to make their allies look bad.

It is interesting to speculate on who may want Maliki dead. Personally, I put the finger on former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s grouping of Sunnis and liberal Shia. He’s a former Baathist and confidant of Saddam Hussein who had a falling out with Saddam, joined the opposition and survived an assassination attempt by Saddam’s agents in London.

These bastards are basically capable of anything.

Maliki was supposed to speak on Sunday but his doctors said he was not well enough to appear yet. But he did appear later on that evening at a press conference.

The Head Size/Race/IQ Trainwreck

Repost from the old site.

Average cranial capacities of indigenous populations, sex-combined means. Black: 1450 cc. and over; checkerboard: 1400-1449; crosshatching: 1350-1399; horizontal striping: 1300-1349; diagonal striping: 1250-1299; dots: 1200-1249. From Beals et al., 1984.

Click to enlarge.

White racists like to make a big deal about the supposed correlation between head size and intelligence and race. A nice little chart showing the basically dishonest portrayal they attempt based on cherry-picking data is below. I’ve already dealt with this before, but it’s time to add some new evidence to the theory.

As you can see, in the Americas, there is no good evidence whatsoever for head size and IQ. I am not aware that Amerindian IQ varies in the Americas. The average is apparently 87 across the continent. If anyone can show me that it varies by latitude, please do.

The biggest heads of all are in Northern Chinese (Manchurians), Eskimos, Alaskan natives, Siberians and Mongolians. The Northern Chinese IQ is 105, the Mongolian IQ is 100, the Eskimo IQ is 91, the Alaska native IQ is 87 and the Siberian native IQ is not known.

Note that Amerindians in Canada, Alaska, Mexico (!) and Tierra Del Fuego have larger heads (1400-1449 cc.) than any Europeans, yet Europeans have higher IQ’s than any of these Amerindians, who have IQ’s of 87. In addition, Uralics and Northeast Asians also have very large heads. Northeast Asians have median IQ’s of 105, Uralics have IQ’s of 96 and Amerindians have IQ’s of 87.

Amerindians in most of the US and in most of Latin America, Egyptians, Ugandans and Oceanians (Polynesians, Melanesians and Micronesians) have the same sized heads (1350-1399 cc.) as Northern and Central Europeans.

Northern and Central Europeans have median IQ’s of 98, Amerindians are at 87, Oceanians have median IQ’s of 84.5, and Ugandans have IQ’s of 73.

Some Amerindians, North Africans and Sahelians, Central Indians and Arabs, SE Asian Islanders (Indonesians, Bruneians, Malays and Filipinos), South Africans, New Guineans, and Middle Easterners have the same head sizes (1300-1349 cc.) as Southern Europeans.

Southern Europeans have a median IQ of 93. Amerindians again have IQ’s of 87. SE Asian Islanders have median IQ’s of 89.5, Arabs, North Africans and Middle Easterners have median IQ’s of 83.5. Central Indians and Central Asians have median IQ’s of 82. South Africans have median IQ’s of 70.5. Sahelians and West Africans have median IQ’s of 67.5.

It is true that most Africans have small heads, at 1250-1299 cc. However, southern Indians and some Amerindians have the same sized heads. These Africans have median IQ’s of 68.5, the Indians have IQ’s of 81.5 and the Amerindians have IQ’s of 87.

The smallest heads in the world (1200-1249 cc.) are actually not found in Africa. They are found in SE Asia and South India and Sri Lanka (we will also include the Seychelles and the Comoros). South Indians have a median IQ of 81 and SE Asians have median IQ’s of 90.

Does any of this make much sense? Not really.

Race realists, for the most part Northern European racists, often use a subset of these figures to demonstrate a link between IQ and head size. The subset looks something like this.

Misleading Racist Head Size/IQ Chart

Head Size
Asians       Europeans     Africans
Largest      Intermediate  Smallest
1400-1449cc. 1350-1399 cc. 1250-1299 cc.

IQ
Asians   Europeans    Africans
106      100          67

This is misleading. Let’s do it the right way.

Proper Head Size/IQ Chart

Largest heads 1450 cc.+
Variable        IQ

North Chinese*  105
Mongolians      99.5
Eskimos         91
Amerindians**   87
Siberians***    unknown

Median          95.5

*Manchuria
**Alaskans
***Aboriginals
Large heads 1400-1449 cc.
Variable       IQ

NE Asians*     105
Russians**     96
Amerindians**  87

Median         96

*incl. S. Chinese
**Uralics
**Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Fuegians
Medium-large heads 1350-1399 cc.
Variable             IQ

Nor./Cent. Europeans 98
Amerindians*         87
Oceanians**          84.5
Ugandans             73

Median               86

*Most Amerindians
**Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia
Medium-small heads 1300-1349 cc. 
Variable               IQ

S. Europeans           93
SE Asian Islanders*    89.5
Amerindians**          87
Middle Easterners***   83.5
Central Asians****     82
South Africans         70.5
Sahelians/W. Africans  67.5
Papuans                65

Median                 82.5 

*Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines
**Equatorial
***Arabs, North Africans and SW Asians
****Incl. Central Indians
Small heads 1250-1299 cc.
Variable      IQ

Amerindians*  87
South Indians 81.5
Africans**    68.5

Median        81.5

*Caribbean
**Most
Smallest heads 1200-1249 cc.
Variable           IQ

SE Asians          90
Far South Indians* 81

Median             85.5

*Incl. Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Comoros

This looks like a complete wreck to me. There’s just not much there, once you sit down and really do the map.

People with large heads have very high (Several European countries = 101) and very low IQ’s (Ugandans = 73). Some people with the smallest heads have very high IQ’s (Vietnamese = 99.5). There’s sort of a general trend, but the data is all over the place, like a drunk throwing darts at a dartboard.

I wish people would quit talking about this race = head size = IQ thing already.

References

Beals, K.L., Smith, C.L. & Dodd, S.M. 1984. Brain Size, Cranial Morphology, Climate, and Time Machines. Current Anthropology, 25:301-330.

Lynn, R. and Vanhanen, T. 2006. IQ and Global Inequality. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers.

Meisenberg, Gerhard. Winter 2003. IQ Population Genetics: It’s Not as Simple as You Think. Washington, DC: Mankind Quarterly, Volume XLIV, Number 2, pp.185-210.

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Head Size = Brains = Nonsense

Repost from the old site.

It is much postulated by hereditarians in the IQ debate that head size has a correlation with IQ. This seems to be true to some extent, but there are also problems with it. For one thing, nutrition increases head size, so head size is not as genetic as the hereditarians say it is. Another problem is that it is only a correlation, and not a very high one either.

What this means is that there will be cases where it does not make sense at all. For instance, Eskimos have the biggest heads, but they have IQ’s of 91, which, though Richard Lynn falsely states that they are the third major race in IQ, behind Northeast Asians and European Whites.

This is because Lynn leaves out very high scoring groups like East Indians in the West (IQ = 96) and Vietnamese (IQ = 99.5), but they don’t fit his silly Ice Age Theory of Brains Evolution, so they get left out.

Even more problematic, or much more really, enough to make the case for brain size = brains even more deadly, is the fact that human brains were much larger 10,000 years ago, when most Asians were all still Australoids (the same race as Papuans and Aborigines), when European Whites as we now know them were just beginning to evolve, and white skin was still 1,000 years away in Europe, when American Indians were changing from Australoid to Polynesian type, and the NE Asian type had not even really showed up yet, and would not for a few thousand years more.

People in India still looked like Aborigines too, and would not look like the modern-day Caucasians that they surely are for another 2,000 years. In most of the world, man was simply transforming from Australoid to either Amerindian, Indian Caucasian or Northeast Asian.

To think that these Aborigine types were smarter then than we are today and have today ended up sadly and world’s lowest IQ race except for Bushmen simply defies belief. No one was doing much better anywhere on Earth really at that time, as something called Civilization had not even developed.

If you want to think that 10,000 year old Cro-Magnon hulking hunter-gatherers and a bunch of proto-Aborigines, who were probably even lower IQ than they are today, were smarter than the guys who put a man on the moon and created the wonder known as sliced bread, you are entitled to that belief. But I will call you an idiot.

Even Lynn’s head size correlations that the hereditarians love so much only account for 1

That brains were bigger 10,000 years ago than they are today simply means that humans have been getting less robust and more gracile. Robust means big and hulking. Aborigines, Melanesians and Papuans are some of the most robust folks around these days. Blacks are not necessarily as robust as one might think, many are surprisingly gracile.

We have been transforming from robust, hulking cave men more or less to our present status as Blackberry-doing New York metrosexuals, and in this transformation our brains have shrunk dramatically as we got sleeker and sleeker and more Upper East Side New York sleek and gym-trained.

Also, we should note that since 1600 to the present day our heads have been getting smaller and smaller. This is occurring in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and may have been occurring elsewhere too.

If you really think that folks in the time of Shakespeare, Galileo, Hobbes, Descartes, Cromwell, Fermat, Rembrandt, Cervantes, Pascal, Leibniz, Peter the Great, Bach, Newton, Racine, Locke, Spinoza were smarter than we are, you may.

If you wish to believe that the humans who pulled off the Salem Witch Trials, Galileo’s Inquisition, and the idiotic Thirty Years War, the people who caused the Plague by sheer stupidity, the people who invented a famous thing called Pilgrims, who fought endless war in Europe against the Ottomans only halting at Vienna, were smarter than we are in our Teraflop Age, you are welcome to believe that, but I am going to call bull on that.

Still, they did halt the Turk at the gates, Newton did write is mathematical encyclopedic masterpiece, and the treaty of Westphalia was all pulled off, so this time did have its potential. Note, though, that all this good stuff occurred late Century when our brains were already shrinking. See where this argument is going? Time to get off a train that’s going off the tracks.

As you can see, the Fathead Brain Theory has serious issues, to say the least. There seems to be something there, but there is a lot less there than one might think. When people start talking in general terms of Fathead Brainiacness, it is time to wave the arms and shut the conversation down.

Hereditarians, come on, you can do better than this.

“Common Ground,” by Alpha Unit

Some of the most subversive characters to exist in this country could be found in the Deep South, beginning in the late 1950s. They were regular people doing what regular people weren’t supposed to do somehow: Black people and White people working together and hanging out together and carving out an exception to the system of Jim Crow.

Florence, Alabama – located in the northwestern corner of Alabama – was the original locus of this activity.

These untoward doings were centered right above the City Drug Store in Florence. Tom Stafford, who was directing it, was the son of the drugstore pharmacist. He loved music and enjoyed hanging out with some of the local young musicians, when he wasn’t managing a movie theater in town.

Some of the aspiring musicians he knew were Dan Penn, Billy Sherrill, Rick Hall, and Spooner Oldham.

Rick Hall had been trying to get into the music business in Nashville. He began his career playing fiddle for a local Alabama country group, but he soon found success as a songwriter in Nashville; he wrote “Aching Breaking Heart,” which became a hit for George Jones.

Later he became a songwriting partner with Billy Sherrill, who had played blues as a teenager in Alabama. As a songwriting team they had some success with a song they wrote for Roy Orbison.

The two formed a band that played rock and rhythm-and-blues; they called themselves The Fairlanes. They liked this music called rhythm-and-blues and knew that White people enjoyed it as much as Black people did. It gave Rick Hall the impetus to say good-bye to Nashville. That, along with his dissatisfaction with songwriting royalties.

He and Sherrill left Nashville and started pitching songs to James Joiner, the owner of Tune Records and Publishing Company in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. They were going to stick with rhythm-and-blues.

Muscle Shoals had been a local gateway of sorts to Nashville; anyone who could make an impression there stood a better chance of impressing people elsewhere in the music industry. Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill were ready to stake it all on Muscle Shoals instead.

It was James Joiner who put them in touch with Tom Stafford.

The three men – Stafford, Hall, and Sherrill – shared enthusiasm for the music and became business partners. It was their new publishing company – the Florence Alabama Music Enterprises (FAME) – that was located over the drug store.

The partnership was short-lived, though. Rick Hall separated from Sherrill and Stafford and opened his own recording studio – keeping the old name – on Wilson Dam Road in Muscle Shoals. Not long afterward he recorded the first hit record from the area, a song called “You Better Move On” by a local Black singer named Arthur Alexander.

With money he made from that record, Hall was able to move his studios to a new building on Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals. The second hit he recorded was also by a Black singer, Jimmy Hughes. Other Black singers were soon coming to FAME Studios, singers like Etta James and Joe Tex. Rick Hall was getting attention from Blacks and Whites alike. As his wife Linda tells it:

They’d just come by and see what was going on because this was the early sixties and that wasn’t the thing to do, Black people working with White people. But Rick did it anyway, and enjoyed it, and has always been able to relate well with Black people. It’s always been a good marriage.

It doesn’t surprise me that Rick Hall could relate well to Black people. His beginnings hadn’t been that different from those of many Blacks in Alabama during the same time.

Born in 1932, he grew up dirt poor with a single father after his mother left the family. His father moved to Ohio to take a job in a defense plant, with the intention of making enough money to buy land in Alabama. After the war, Rick and his family returned to Alabama where his father became a sharecropper.

If you were poor and living in rural Alabama during the period leading up to the Depression, you didn’t have that many options for survival. Sharecropping and tenant farming were life, whether you were White or Black.

Sharecropping was the system whereby you worked on someone else’s land and paid them with a portion of the crop. Generally, if all you brought to this deal was your labor and you depended on the landowner for the rest, you would get a third. If you had your own draft animals, equipment, and supplies, you could get half.

Typically, though, you were impoverished and perennially in debt. You had substandard housing (to put it mildly), poor sanitation, a lousy diet, and susceptibility to the kinds of health problems created by the aforementioned conditions. You were also socially isolated.

People usually associate tenant farming with the postbellum period in the South, but it had existed in Alabama prior to the Civil War – and all of the farmers had been White. After the war, there was a serious disruption in the agricultural system, since most labor had been performed by slaves. Many of the former slaves left the farms and plantations and moved into cities. Fields went uncultivated and land values depreciated.

The people who owned the land knew something had to be done. They saw newly freed Blacks as the best source of labor, so they encouraged Blacks to return to the plantations for wages.

The deal they had in mind was for Blacks to live in the old slave quarters and work in gangs as they had during slavery. Well, it didn’t go over that well. Freed Blacks didn’t really care to return to the old slave quarters. And they weren’t too crazy about working in gangs, either. So much for all that fondness Black people had for slavery.

Another problem, perhaps the main one, was that landowners had little money to pay laborers.

A system of cooperation had to exist in order for agriculture to work. So landowners, freed Blacks, and poor Whites all coexisted in this system. The White landowners dominated both the poor Blacks and the poor Whites.

In time, White sharecroppers in Alabama outnumbered Black, except in the Alabama “Black Belt.”

Poverty is one hell of an equalizer.

These were some of the ties that bound Whites and Blacks in Alabama when guys like Rick Hall, Billy Sherrill, and Tom Stafford were growing up there. And music created a significant bond. That’s what music seems to do; it penetrates all kinds of barriers people put up between one another. When it touches you, you can’t be untouched. The music producer Sam Phillips, who grew up near Florence the son of a cotton farmer, called this area a “melting pot of musical influences”:

When I was growing up, we heard it all. In the fields we heard the Black man’s blues, in the churches we heard Black spirituals and White gospel, and on the radio we heard the Grand Ole Opry and those glorious songs from Tin Pan Alley. Out of that we created a sound that’s hard to define, hard to pigeonhole…

All of these influences were a part of the background from which the music of Muscle Shoals emerged.

What brought Muscle Shoals to national prominence was the song known as its musical anthem:”When A Man Loves a Woman,” recorded by Percy Sledge. It was a different producer, Quin Ivy, who recorded Percy Sledge, but he sent the song to Rick Hall, who loved it. Hall then contacted Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records in New York; Atlantic recognized a hit and released it. It was the first song recorded in Muscle Shoals that became an international success.

Jerry Wexler liked the idea of recording in Muscle Shoals. As he told it:

Rigor mortis had set in up north. I had spent a decade recording with written arrangements. The arrangers were out of ideas, the musicians were out of licks and we were out of our minds. I was reinvigorated by this Southern method of recording. Once I had a taste of it, I loved it. It was like a religious retreat.

Of the session musicians in Muscle Shoals, he said:

These were country boys. They weren’t hicks by any means, but they were good old boys who loved country music but hated playing it. They had taken a turn toward a little more sophisticated type of music, which was rhythm-and-blues. They shared common experiences with the Black artists they played with – they all walked with the same mud between their toes.

Jerry Wexler brought other talent to record in Muscle Shoals. (He also brought his own engineer, Tom Dowd, a move that didn’t really appeal to Rick Hall.) An artist who had a similar background to Rick Hall’s – sharecropping, dysfunction, a certain rebelliousness – was Wilson Pickett, who had had success at Stax. He recorded some of his biggest hits at FAME Studios.

Wexler also brought Aretha Franklin. The song that established her in the music industry, “I Never Loved A Man (The Way That I Loved You),” came out of Muscle Shoals.

The truth is, by the time Rick Hall began recording Black artists at FAME Studios, the slow dismantling of segregation was already underway in the South. The Civil Rights movement coincided with some of his greatest success.

But music was common ground for Black Americans and White Americans in the South before civil rights was expected or fashionable. Some things just seem to be stronger than Race.

References

Fuqua, Christopher S. 2005. Music Fell on Alabama: The Muscle Shoals Sound That Shook the World. Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books.

"Common Ground," by Alpha Unit

Some of the most subversive characters to exist in this country could be found in the Deep South, beginning in the late 1950s. They were regular people doing what regular people weren’t supposed to do somehow: Black people and White people working together and hanging out together and carving out an exception to the system of Jim Crow. Florence, Alabama – located in the northwestern corner of Alabama – was the original locus of this activity. These untoward doings were centered right above the City Drug Store in Florence. Tom Stafford, who was directing it, was the son of the drugstore pharmacist. He loved music and enjoyed hanging out with some of the local young musicians, when he wasn’t managing a movie theater in town. Some of the aspiring musicians he knew were Dan Penn, Billy Sherrill, Rick Hall, and Spooner Oldham. Rick Hall had been trying to get into the music business in Nashville. He began his career playing fiddle for a local Alabama country group, but he soon found success as a songwriter in Nashville; he wrote “Aching Breaking Heart,” which became a hit for George Jones. Later he became a songwriting partner with Billy Sherrill, who had played blues as a teenager in Alabama. As a songwriting team they had some success with a song they wrote for Roy Orbison. The two formed a band that played rock and rhythm-and-blues; they called themselves The Fairlanes. They liked this music called rhythm-and-blues and knew that White people enjoyed it as much as Black people did. It gave Rick Hall the impetus to say good-bye to Nashville. That, along with his dissatisfaction with songwriting royalties. He and Sherrill left Nashville and started pitching songs to James Joiner, the owner of Tune Records and Publishing Company in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. They were going to stick with rhythm-and-blues. Muscle Shoals had been a local gateway of sorts to Nashville; anyone who could make an impression there stood a better chance of impressing people elsewhere in the music industry. Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill were ready to stake it all on Muscle Shoals instead. It was James Joiner who put them in touch with Tom Stafford. The three men – Stafford, Hall, and Sherrill – shared enthusiasm for the music and became business partners. It was their new publishing company – the Florence Alabama Music Enterprises (FAME) – that was located over the drug store. The partnership was short-lived, though. Rick Hall separated from Sherrill and Stafford and opened his own recording studio – keeping the old name – on Wilson Dam Road in Muscle Shoals. Not long afterward he recorded the first hit record from the area, a song called “You Better Move On” by a local Black singer named Arthur Alexander. With money he made from that record, Hall was able to move his studios to a new building on Avalon Avenue in Muscle Shoals. The second hit he recorded was also by a Black singer, Jimmy Hughes. Other Black singers were soon coming to FAME Studios, singers like Etta James and Joe Tex. Rick Hall was getting attention from Blacks and Whites alike. As his wife Linda tells it:

They’d just come by and see what was going on because this was the early sixties and that wasn’t the thing to do, Black people working with White people. But Rick did it anyway, and enjoyed it, and has always been able to relate well with Black people. It’s always been a good marriage.

It doesn’t surprise me that Rick Hall could relate well to Black people. His beginnings hadn’t been that different from those of many Blacks in Alabama during the same time. Born in 1932, he grew up dirt poor with a single father after his mother left the family. His father moved to Ohio to take a job in a defense plant, with the intention of making enough money to buy land in Alabama. After the war, Rick and his family returned to Alabama where his father became a sharecropper. If you were poor and living in rural Alabama during the period leading up to the Depression, you didn’t have that many options for survival. Sharecropping and tenant farming were life, whether you were White or Black. Sharecropping was the system whereby you worked on someone else’s land and paid them with a portion of the crop. Generally, if all you brought to this deal was your labor and you depended on the landowner for the rest, you would get a third. If you had your own draft animals, equipment, and supplies, you could get half. Typically, though, you were impoverished and perennially in debt. You had substandard housing (to put it mildly), poor sanitation, a lousy diet, and susceptibility to the kinds of health problems created by the aforementioned conditions. You were also socially isolated. People usually associate tenant farming with the postbellum period in the South, but it had existed in Alabama prior to the Civil War – and all of the farmers had been White. After the war, there was a serious disruption in the agricultural system, since most labor had been performed by slaves. Many of the former slaves left the farms and plantations and moved into cities. Fields went uncultivated and land values depreciated. The people who owned the land knew something had to be done. They saw newly freed Blacks as the best source of labor, so they encouraged Blacks to return to the plantations for wages. The deal they had in mind was for Blacks to live in the old slave quarters and work in gangs as they had during slavery. Well, it didn’t go over that well. Freed Blacks didn’t really care to return to the old slave quarters. And they weren’t too crazy about working in gangs, either. So much for all that fondness Black people had for slavery. Another problem, perhaps the main one, was that landowners had little money to pay laborers. A system of cooperation had to exist in order for agriculture to work. So landowners, freed Blacks, and poor Whites all coexisted in this system. The White landowners dominated both the poor Blacks and the poor Whites. In time, White sharecroppers in Alabama outnumbered Black, except in the Alabama “Black Belt.” Poverty is one hell of an equalizer. These were some of the ties that bound Whites and Blacks in Alabama when guys like Rick Hall, Billy Sherrill, and Tom Stafford were growing up there. And music created a significant bond. That’s what music seems to do; it penetrates all kinds of barriers people put up between one another. When it touches you, you can’t be untouched. The music producer Sam Phillips, who grew up near Florence the son of a cotton farmer, called this area a “melting pot of musical influences”:

When I was growing up, we heard it all. In the fields we heard the Black man’s blues, in the churches we heard Black spirituals and White gospel, and on the radio we heard the Grand Ole Opry and those glorious songs from Tin Pan Alley. Out of that we created a sound that’s hard to define, hard to pigeonhole…

All of these influences were a part of the background from which the music of Muscle Shoals emerged. What brought Muscle Shoals to national prominence was the song known as its musical anthem:”When A Man Loves a Woman,” recorded by Percy Sledge. It was a different producer, Quin Ivy, who recorded Percy Sledge, but he sent the song to Rick Hall, who loved it. Hall then contacted Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records in New York; Atlantic recognized a hit and released it. It was the first song recorded in Muscle Shoals that became an international success. Jerry Wexler liked the idea of recording in Muscle Shoals. As he told it:

Rigor mortis had set in up north. I had spent a decade recording with written arrangements. The arrangers were out of ideas, the musicians were out of licks and we were out of our minds. I was reinvigorated by this Southern method of recording. Once I had a taste of it, I loved it. It was like a religious retreat.

Of the session musicians in Muscle Shoals, he said:

These were country boys. They weren’t hicks by any means, but they were good old boys who loved country music but hated playing it. They had taken a turn toward a little more sophisticated type of music, which was rhythm-and-blues. They shared common experiences with the Black artists they played with – they all walked with the same mud between their toes.

Jerry Wexler brought other talent to record in Muscle Shoals. (He also brought his own engineer, Tom Dowd, a move that didn’t really appeal to Rick Hall.) An artist who had a similar background to Rick Hall’s – sharecropping, dysfunction, a certain rebelliousness – was Wilson Pickett, who had had success at Stax. He recorded some of his biggest hits at FAME Studios. Wexler also brought Aretha Franklin. The song that established her in the music industry, “I Never Loved A Man (The Way That I Loved You),” came out of Muscle Shoals. The truth is, by the time Rick Hall began recording Black artists at FAME Studios, the slow dismantling of segregation was already underway in the South. The Civil Rights movement coincided with some of his greatest success. But music was common ground for Black Americans and White Americans in the South before civil rights was expected or fashionable. Some things just seem to be stronger than Race.

References

Fuqua, Christopher S. 2005. Music Fell on Alabama: The Muscle Shoals Sound That Shook the World. Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books.

All Or Nothing, Black and White Thinking and How Racism Works

Commenter tulio, responding to a previous comment of mine, makes some interesting observations about racist thinking that I then respond to. The references are to anti-Black racists and White racists who hate non-Whites, but I don’t mean to be a PC dickwad and single out Whites here. Racism is found all over the world in all sorts of groups, in many cases calling itself, tribalism, sectarianism, etc. It works the same way with non-Whites as it does with Whites, and non-Whites can be and frequently are as racist, or more racist, than Whites.

RL: I am kind of confused though. I would not call it self-hating because I don’t hate any part of myself. I mean, I hate what these illegals have done to the city I live in, but then I have to deal with them all day. I shop at the illegal alien supermarket because they’re nicer than the Whites. I go to Spanish language Mass because it’s cooler and the Hispanics are nicer.I talk to the illegals a lot and I get drunk with them in the bars and they put their arms around me like we are best buddies. They say they like me because I’m nice to the Mexicans. But then I really do want them to go back to Mexico. But if I were a Mexican, I would probably be just like them. I don’t hate them as individuals, but I hate what they do to our towns collectively.

Tulio then responds.

tulio: This is a fascinating passage and really shows just how psychologically and sociologically complicated race is in America. I think many people feel just like you. In fact, I’m convinced that extremists, like the Nordicist you mentioned is nothing more than a coping mechanism in the face of dealing with a world full of contradictions, idiosyncrasies, and shades of gray. It makes life psychologically easier and mentally more manageable. You don’t have to be bogged down with all these contradicting thoughts that drain mental energy.Just write off an entire race, hate them, want absolutely nothing to do with them and you don’t really have to think about it. If you ever confront an extremist on anything and you introduce logic that forces them to question their beliefs, they get abruptly upset. And you can see why. You are making their easily manageable world much more arduous. Living with cognitive dissonance isn’t for everyone.

I respond:

Yeah, it’s so much easier just to say, “Fuck em all,” than to say, “Well, some of them are good, and some of them are bad.” Well, then do you hate them or what? If some are good and some are bad, you can’t really hate them. There are not that many real racists who say, “Well, some are good, and some are bad,” because once you say that, it’s hard to hate.

The anti-Black and anti-non-White racists I run into online generally just hate everyone in the group that they dislike, and most of them simply do not befriend, socialize with or date Blacks or non-Whites. You see, once you start doing that, it screws up your whole racist system.

What a lot of the racists do say, though, is that a few, and only a few Blacks are good people. It’s like 5-1

I think a lot of these folks also want to say, “Look, I don’t want to sort out the good Blacks from the bad. Fuck it. Too difficult. Either they’re all ok, or they all suck. Since they’re not all ok, I’m going to say they all suck and just get a divorce from Black people.”

IQ By Region Maps

Here are a couple of maps showing average IQ’s by region in the world.

This map shows average IQ's by region of the native peoples of the region. It's good for evolutionary study, but not too useful for the current situation.

The first map is for the native peoples of the region.

This map shows IQ's by current resident majority of each region, so is more useful regarding the current majorities of the region and not so useful evolutionarily.

The second map is for the majority who currently reside there.

The maps have some inaccuracies.

For instance, Vietnam should be colored the same color as Europe, as Vietnamese IQ is 99, not whatever Richard Lynn says it is.

Botswana has a lower IQ than the rest of Africa as the native peoples are regarded as Khoisan and not Negroids. The Khoisan IQ is estimated at 54, but that seems too low. For instance, an anthropologist who spent years working with them described the Khoisan as “intelligent.” The map for Papua New Guinea masks a few things. The Papuans of the highlands are said to have low IQ’s of around 64 or so, around the same as Aborigines. Nevertheless, Jared Diamond, who worked extensively with Papuans, felt that they were “intelligent, not stupid.”

So we see once again primitive groups that are regarded as retarded on IQ tests, yet anthropologists who have spent years in the field with them say that they seem intelligent, and not retarded. IQ tests do not appear to be accurately measuring the intelligence of primitive peoples.

While the Papuans of the highlands of New Guinea have an IQ of 64, that of the Melanesians on the coast is much higher, around 84. This is curious as the Melanesians go back almost as far as Papuans, a good 30,000 years. However, they did receive an infusion of Taiwanese genes a few thousand years ago. To what extent this accounts for their higher IQ’s is not known.

The IQ of Native Americans is surprisingly uniform at around 87 or so. It would be nice if we could break it down further by native group per nation and see what we can get out of it. Some say that the Canadian Natives of the far north have higher IQ’s than the Indians of the SW US. And Mexican Indians are said to have IQ’s around 82, which may rise to 92 with the next generation if they come to the US.

African IQ appears low, but that says little to nothing about African-Americans, whose IQ’s may exceed those of Africans by up to 20 points. The higher US Black IQ certainly cannot be explained by White admixture as the racists and hard hereditarians tend to do.

The reasons why US Blacks have become so much more intelligent in the US is as yet unknown. Improved environment, selective (eugenic) breeding and other factors may be involved. Massive increases in US Black skull size along with changes from a more archaic to a more progressive phenotype in the past 100 years were said to be only partly due to nutrition.

Part of the changes were also thought to be genetic. This indicates that US Blacks have been genetically evolving towards a more progressive phenotype and larger heads in the past 100 years. Perhaps US Blacks with higher intelligence and more progressive phenotype have been preferentially selected since 1900. Theories about dysgenic trends in the US Black community are unwarranted and unsupported by the science.

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A Few Words on Stereotype Threat

A very smart Black man whom I will not name has been emailing me lately about Black-White IQ differences. It’s not exactly my favorite subject, as it’s so damn depressing (since I’m pro-Black), but nevertheless, I have been engaging him. It’s sad that the Nurture Crowd are falling back on Stereotype Threat (ST). At first it sounds like a brilliant argument, since it has apparently been proven in a number of strictly experimental situations.

But there is a problem with this argument, a deadly one that kills it right in its tracks. If you study ST threat long enough, you finally figure out the depressing truth that ST cannot possibly explain B-W differences in IQ or other tests or achievement results. Because all ST does is take the typical B-W differential in this lineup (let’s call it X) and add to it! It creates a score like X-1

Thus, rather than showing that eliminating threat eliminates the large score gap on standardized tests, the research actually shows something very different.

Specifically, absent stereotype threat, the African American-White difference is just what one would expect based on the African American-White difference in SAT scores, whereas in the presence of stereotype threat, the difference is larger than would be expected based on the difference in SAT scores. (Sackett 2004.)

I’d much rather pin my hopes on a continuing Flynn Effect rather than silly stuff like ST. Black IQ’s have already been rising at 3 pts./decade for 70 years or so, and Black skulls have gotten much larger in the meantime. We can measure the scores and the skulls, and it’s all real and something to cheer about. Assuming this effect continues, and especially if it continues for Blacks but slows or stops for Whites, things could get interesting. Even if Blacks can’t make up the difference, 22 extra IQ points and much bigger skulls (and apparently many more brain cells) in the last 110 years is nothing to shake a stick at.

References

Sackett PR, Hardison CM, Cullen MJ. January 2004. On Interpreting Stereotype Threat as Accounting for African American-White Differences on Cognitive Tests. Am Psychol 59 (1): 7–13.

JewAmongYou – New Race Realist Blog

Jewamongyou.

I know this fellow from the American Renaissance comments section. I rarely comment there anymore because I have tons of enemies on that site who think I am a race traitor – anti-White – anti-racist. They refuse to publish a lot of my comments anyway. Also, increasingly, I find that site distasteful. I realize that’s the moderate end of White nationalism, but WN is not a moderate thing.

The site frankly makes me disgusted, angry and queasy a good part of the time, though there is some good stuff on there. It’s the commenters that really bug me. So many of them seem to hate all non-Whites, and it makes me sick to be around such folks.

Jewamongyou was always one of my favorite posters. He’s a Jewish race realist (great handle by the way), and he was always sober, reasoned, intelligent and often eloquent. There was a kindness and decency about him that was missing from most of the posters. So I was happy to see, via the great Kvetcher, that he has his own site now. Usually, jewamongyou is merely a good writer, but at times, he is simply sublime.

He’s a libertarian, as so many such folks are, and he has a post attempting to explain why race realism and libertarianism go hand and hand. I think he avoids the nasty bits, such as that in Libertarian World, the brainy haves don’t have to help the dummy have-nots.

The have-nots? I dunno. I guess they just get to die in the gutter or something. One of the hazards of Libertarian World is that those wonderful libertarians have to keep stepping over the crumbling bodies of the have-nots whenever they step off the curve. But hey! Small price to pay for no taxes, huh?

He also devotes a lot of his site to Jewry, as apparently he is a religious Jew. He has an interesting take on the Jewish Question, including harsh criticism and maybe opposition to Zionism, avoidance of the pogrom and prosecution narrative of Jewish history and a lack of the typical neurotic Jewish obsession with anti-Semites.

He has a piece on anti-Semites in the race realist movement, and of course it’s swarming with them. His take on Nazis in the movement is sensible and well-reasoned, while avoiding the usual Jewish hysteria. Of course he dislikes anti-Semites, but he regards them as more annoying than anything else (like a wasp you need to shoo out of your house), which in 2010 America, is probably the proper non-neurotic Jewish response.

I’m not sure if Black people will find much to like here, but his site is free from much of the anti-Black animus you typically find on these sites. He has known Blacks whom he respected all through his life.

Though a very long post on why he has told his Jewish daughter he doesn’t want her to date Black guys will leave most Blacks cold.

In his partial defense, it’s an odds argument, not an essentialist one, and that at least makes mathematical sense. Also, I believe that possibly as many as 35-4

Heck, fully 2

For another POV along the same lines, a Black African poster points out that most African Blacks can’t stand African Americans, they don’t do want their children marrying them!

All in all, Jewamongyou is not bad for a race realist blog.

New Liberal Race Realist Blog

Here.

I know who this guy is, but I won’t name any names. I have not read much of what he’s written here other than the opening statement, but I’m in agreement with this project. He also has some liberal race realists in the comments section. I had no idea that there were so many of us. Rather than pushing some sort of “liberal racism” – the typical PC rejoinder to liberal race realism – he is simply trying to find a way to fashion a liberal or progressive project out of the rather discouraging (to us) facts about race, as they come to light.

Clearly, the whole race realist/human biodiversity (HBD) project is now in the hands of the Right, and it does have some major ideological challenges to the Left and liberalism. Nevertheless, I think we are up to the task. There’s no reason to give this whole issue to the Right while continuing to protest with arguments that increasingly seem like disgusting but well-meaning lies.

Furthermore, there are a lot of Whites and males, and especially White males, who are sick and tired of the whole “White People/Men are Evil” line pushed by the PC crowd.

If you go to a California university now, you have to take a Diversity Curriculum that consists of classes that might as well be called White People and Men are Evil. I’ve talked to some White guys who just came out of that program, and they are hopping mad. The general tendency is for folks like that to move to the Right politically, since the Left and the Democratic Party is seen as hostile to Whites and men.

Well, the Left is hostile to Whites and men!

But I’m all about economics, so I’m not about to support rightwing economics (the enemy) just because the Left is bonkers on race, gender, sexual orientation and other crap.

Liberal Race Realism, along with a Liberal analogue to Masculinist Movement, now completely in the hands of the Right, stands a chance of rescuing some of these White and male souls before they take off into rightwing populist la-la land.

It’s time for some real navel-gazing on the Left. It should be clear by now that 40 years of Identity Politics on the Left, now embodied as Queer Theory, Gender Feminism, Critical Race Theory and other forms of jazzed up bullshit soft science, hasn’t done the slightest damn thing for poor people, and especially for poor minorities, in particular for poor Blacks.

Worse, it empowered a horrible rightwing backlash and siphoned a lot of Whites and males off to the neverworlds of rightwing populism. And if we on the Left are working for anyone, it’s for the working classes, the poor, the lower income people, and in particular the minorities among them, who are hurting most of all.

Liberal Biorealism site goes beyond this one by accepting many race realist presuppositions as facts on the ground. It’s notable that they assume that genetics explains most of the B-W IQ difference.

I’m not willing to do that here, at least not yet. As long as that line can still be credibly disputed, and there is no hard consensus on it, I will hold to this optimistic position. My point instead is to say that the tests are valid, and there are intelligence differences among races and ethnic groups, whatever the Hell is causing them. At this sad point, even that is pouring gasoline on the fire of public discourse.

I realize that there is not much in race realism for Blacks, but Blacks should maybe come up with a pro-Black project that takes race realism into account, since this view is only going to grow in the future. For Blacks to throw the whole thing over to hard racists in the Libertarian and Conservative movements, who have nothing but ill will for Blacks, is a mistake.

For instance, it’s typical for rightwing race realists to argue that HBD means that we need to cut off all or most social spending to minorities, since they are genetically inferior, and you’re just throwing good money after bad. Almost all conservative race realists also want to get rid of all anti-discrimination laws. There’s nothing in that but harm for Blacks period, and not just poor Blacks. By not formulating some sort of a pro-Black response to race realism, Blacks risk throwing the ball over to their worst enemies.

Great Book About Africa

Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit, by Gedahlia Braun (a fake name).

I once looked up who he really is, but I’ve forgotten the name. He taught philosophy in Africa for many years. This guy is straight up right about Africans in so many ways that it is incredible. This is how Race Realism ought to be but almost never is. The saving grace in his analysis is a lack of hostility towards Africans. In fact, he likes Africans very much, especially African women. Apparently he has been involved with a number of African women.

According to standard PC thinking, this is a racist book and the author is a racist. Racism is about about hostility towards a group. It’s beyond me how you can be racist towards a group of people whom you like, as long you don’t discriminate against them. However, to be fair, Braun does support segregation and apartheid in South Africa, so in that sense at least he is a racist.

But he’s an awfully mild one. If you’re average White racist was like this guy, the antis would really have their work cut out for them. A Stormfront type makes a nice, fat juicy target. In contrast, guys like Braun are as hard to pin down and get a handle on as a mercury blob.

Furthermore, almost all race realists have animosity towards Blacks. Braun is one of the first race realists that I have run across who seems to actually like Blacks.

The fact that he supports colonialism, segregation and Apartheid, though, is disturbing, since most race realists end up favoring getting rid of an anti-discrimination laws at least. Many also supported colonialism, segregation and Apartheid. Once again we see the disconcerting connection between race realism and support for forms of discrimination and domination of Blacks. Will race realism typically lead to such backwards qualities, and if so, why?

I figure this guy is just telling it like it is. He has lived in Africa for many years, and over that time, developed some interesting views about African culture and thought processes. What’s wrong with that? He lived there, he observed things with an open mind, and these are his conclusions. He’s entitled to them. Who are we to slam him, call him racist and liar? Why do we get to saddle that high horse anyway?

There’s more truth in what Braun writes than in 100 PC anti-racist tomes, most of which are full of laughable anti-scientific, untestable or non-falsifiable joke-theory.

One area that I disagree with him is in trying to draw parallels between Africans and US Blacks. 20 IQ points difference is a Hell of a lot, plus US Blacks have been heavily de-Africanized culturally during their centuries here. Braun discusses an impoverished concept of love (compared to the Western view of romantic love) common to Africans, suggests it may be related to IQ, and then leaps to the idea that US Blacks may experience the same conceptual impoverishment to a lesser degree.

Well, it’s an interesting theory, so I decided to test it out. I don’t know what the average IQ of the Blacks on the Internet is (Is it higher than average?) but the Black women you meet on the Net seem to have a very Western view of romantic love that is about the same as White women’s. Do Black women in the ghetto feel the same way? I’m not sure, as I haven’t had much dealings with these people.

But looking at other groups with average IQ’s of 85-87 (US Black IQ is 87), the females at least in these groups seem to subscribe strongly to the Western version of romantic love. So US Black IQ should be high enough that their views of love should be about the same as the rest of ours, assuming the full concept is IQ-dependent.

The book costs money, and I have not read it, but I’ve read a number of Braun’s other pieces, and the guy is fantastic.

More On Epic Bearded Man

The Epic Bearded Man (EBM) video which went viral all over the world for a bit until it seems to have settled down after a few million views, roused quite a bit of commentary on the Web.

Once again, the video shows a fight between Michael, a 50 year old somewhat ghetto-appearing Black man, and Thomas Bruso, a 62 year old White man on a Muni transit bus. The Black man is the aggressor, but EBM retaliates and pummels him badly.

There were many interpretations of it, the best one seeing bullies finally get their comeuppance by harried victims. Also, it was interesting to see a 62 year old White guy, a former Marine wearing an “I am a motherfucker” t-shirt, kick some ass. As older people are of course more victims an aggressors in our society, this ties in with the first one, rooting for the underdog/victim and seeing bullies get their just desserts.

A less noble and more disturbing aspect was that in the world of Black-White crime and general aggression, nowadays anyway, it’s pretty much Blacks doing all the crime and aggression against White victims and not a whole lot going on in the other direction. In fact, the reverse is so unusual these days that the media goes nuts whenever it happens (Duke stripper case, West Virginia sex torture case). So it was a case of of One Man Is Fighting Back.

This is similar to the Arab pride in Osama bin Laden after 9-11. With all the aggressions that the Arabs see being perpetrated on the West, One Man Is Fighting Back. That man being Osama. This is not so much White racism as similar to the Arab reaction of the victims finally standing up and fighting back for once against powerful aggressors who are inflicting a lot of damage. As it’s tied in with victims fighting back, this reaction is related to the first two.

The more disturbing reaction was the mass outpouring of White racism in the comments threads on the EBM video. “Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger!” Commenter tulio seemed to note that there was an almost sexual, orgiastic or dare I say ejaculatory aspect to these comments. Like they were getting a racism speed high. The EBM video was forwarded all over the White nationalist and White racist web, and this probably added to the comments.

Anyway, a typical reading of the video was, “Niggers just can’t behave like civilized humans.” Another reading was from Blacks, defensive in nature. They saw EBM as a White racist who started the fight by making racist comments. Michael was just fighting back against racist baiting.

The timeline of the incident is hard to figure, but it does not appear that EBM was making racist comments. At the bus stop, he had been going on and on about his new shoes that he bought for his Mother’s funeral and how he was going to get them shined. “My boy is gonna shine my shoes,” he was saying. I guess that means his White friend or something. He got on the bus and kept talking about the shoes and how he was going to get his boy to shine them.

Michael, drunk, got on the bus and overheard them and read racist intent into the comments: that Bruso was going to get some Black guy, a boy, to shine his shoes. This started the whole misunderstanding.

As we learn more in later days, things become even more confusing. Bruso is a regarded as a sometimes-violent loon with unknown mental issues that sound like PTSD.

Here is a photo from Troy Holden in 1996 of Bruso in San Francisco. Bruso used to walk past Holden’s shop on 2nd and Market every day with a loaf of sourdough in his hand, stop in front of the shop, wave the sourdough in Holden’s face, give the finger and scream obscenities about the San Francisco 49’ers. So Bruso is a long-term street loon in the Bay Area for at least 14 years.

He “goes off his meds sometimes,” and then he can become violent and troublesome, but mostly he’s a nice guy who is also funny. He’s just a local character.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I1r3dhMUO4]

A new video is available with an interview with the Black guy. The Black guy, whose name is Michael, may not be as ghetto as he dresses and acts in the video, as he doesn’t come off that way in the interview. Even more strange is that the word on the street is that he is gay! He sounds pretty effeminate in the interview, but he also talks about his fiancee back in Georgia.

Rather than being a ghetto thug, he’s just some belligerent drunk. He’s troublesome rather than menacing. You know, like Bruso?

After Bruso got out of jail, the cops were driving him around to coffee shops and giving him free rides all day. He was a local hero with the Oakland police, which probably has quite a few Black officers. Bruso was back in downtown Oakland the next day, which is where he hangs out. Many of the local young Black guys were surrounding him – he was their hero! Bruso was eating it up and hanging out with his new Black friends all day. By the end of the day, he was starting to talk and walk like the young Black males of Oakland, his new best friends.

The more you hear about this case, the more it seems that r had little or nothing to do with it! But so many people tried to read a racial or worse, racist, line into this story. That says more about us than about the protagonists.

Fight Between Black Woman and Chinese Woman on a Bus

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rm4SazjKsQ]

This video, like the Epic Bearded Man video earlier, is also going seriously viral right now. All of the versions combined have about 2.1 million views so far.

Similarly, it is being promoted by White nationalists and White racists online who are linking it and forwarding it around. Instead of a fight between two middle aged men on a Bay Area Muni bus, one White and one Black, this is a fight between two young women on a Bay Area Muni bus (this one in San Francisco’s Chinatown), one Black and one Chinese. The Chinese woman wins the fight, and the Black girl goes off the bus and sulks.

It looks like the Black girl starts it by putting her stuff across two seats. The Chinese girl moves some of the Black girl’s stuff to sit down, and the Black girl goes nuts.

There’s some funny dialogue in there because the Chinese girl can hardly speak English.

“FUCKA YOU!” “SHUT UP!” “YOU A STUPID!”

The Black is being the aggressor, invading the Chinese girl’s space and repeating moving her hands toward the other girl’s face. The Chinese girl is backed up against the side of the bus, defensive. The Black also throws the first blow.

Black girl: “Say it again, say it again…” Chinese girl: “FAK YOU!” Black girl: “Say it again, say it again…” Chinese girl: “FUT YOU!”

Then the Black girl punches the Chinese girl! Bam! At about 1:16.

Then after she throws the punch, she runs away like a typical chick (LOL). The Chinese girl follows her, they grapple a bit, the Chinese girl karate chops her a few times (LOL) then she Kung Fu kicks her a few more times (LOL). Some older Chinese woman breaks up the fight. The Chinese woman is speaking Chinese the whole time, so it’s hard to figure out what’s being said.

As tulio noted in the EBM post, likewise with this video, it’s produced a veritable flood of anti-Black racism in the comments section, mostly by Whites but also quite a bit by Asians.

The Black woman is a stand-in for Blacks in general, the Chinese woman is Civilization Fighting Back. The general tone of the comments is, “Look how Black people can’t control themselves.” This is really just a fight on a Muni bus, and I’m not sure what race has to do with it too much, but once again, the tsunami of anti-Black hatred these random videos provoke is pretty breathtaking to behold.

Homicidal Music

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Numk9kXDV1o]

Really, is there anything better than homicidal music? I don’t mean better than anything. Of course homicide itself is way more fun than just listening to songs about it, but unfortunately, most of us lead sheltered lives and can’t let our darkest fantasies run wild.

This is a great song, “If I Had a Gun” by a great new singer. Her name is Diana Jones, and she’s 45 years old. She has an interesting history. She was adopted and never knew her real parents. Moved around the Northeast a lot as a kid, ran away from home at 15 and lived on the streets for a while, then to dead-end jobs, and finally she got accepted at a major university.

She got a degree, then went into an MFA program at another university. Later she wandered around Europe, the whole time painting and playing folk songs trying to sound like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

Around 10 years ago, she decided to look up her birth parents. It was hard to do, but she finally found them in Tennessee. She went to visit them, and there they were, people who looked just like her, mountain people. Her grandfather took her to Great Smoky Mountains National Park where they have a redone old village.

There they bought an Alan Lomax album. Alan Lomax was an interesting guy. He was a professor at a university, a musicologist who wandered around recording “forgotten music,” especially folk music.

They were listening to the songs, called mountain music, on the way home, and to her surprise, her grandfather knew them all. Turns out he had been a mountain music musician. That got her interested in the genre, and she has been recording mountain music ever since. The phrase mountain music is hardly known, but this type of music is better known as “old-time music.”

This is is the original American folk music.

It goes back to the early 1800’s and possibly even prior. Its roots were generally in English, Scottish and Irish folk music, and you can hear some of that in this song. The banjo is an essential instrument in this genre, and it has an interesting history in the US.

Most of us think that the Black contribution to US music began at the latest in the early 1900’s with Ragtime. Not the case. The banjo in the US was originally a Black instrument, modeled after some sort of an instrument used in Africa.

In Appalachia, Black musicians introduced the banjo in the early 1800’s. There are not many Blacks in Appalachia now, but there were more back then. There were few if any slaves there, even though most of the Appalachian states were slave states. In the Appalachian parts of these states, there was no use for Black slaves.

Many Black slave runaways probably ended up there after taking off from plantations in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. Once you got into the mountains, probably nobody was going to find you anyway, and the mountain folk didn’t care about runaway slaves. These areas were very isolated. Many people never left their small Appalachian town in their lives, and most outsiders never went there.

Old-time music was biggest in Appalachia, but it was also present elsewhere, such as in New England, the Midwest, the South and the West. Since these other areas were less isolated, old-time music tended to go out as people were exposed to newer styles, but the remoteness of Appalachia allowed the music to continue on into the 20th Century relatively unchanged.

Old-time music is folk music, but it is not country or bluegrass music. But! Both country music and bluegrass music came out of old-time music. What’s fascinating is that we never think of all the all-White, redneck country and bluegrass music as being even remotely Black-influenced, but if they both came out of Black-influenced old-time music, there is even Black influence in the Whitest of American music.

I’m not too wild about folk proper, and a lot of bluegrass leaves me cold, but this song is killer! I’ve never heard a woman write a song about murdering her abusive husband before – what a great topic!

Her guitar? A 1967 Gibson. What else?

Further, it’s an excellent rejoinder to “Hey Joe,” the great song by Jimi Hendrix.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mBjG9chIFw]

Another great homicidal song is “Violence” by Mott the Hoople. Mott was only one of the greatest rock bands of all time, but almost no one has heard of them these days. They were a pretty big underground band in the 1970’s, and their albums Mott and The Hoople were pretty big hits, but then they broke up. Ian Hunter later went solo.

Viiiii-o-lence, viiiii-o-lence, it’s the only thing that’ll make you see sense!

Well, of course. Once you’ve experienced violence up close and personal, you will respect if for the rest of your life. That’s how it makes you see sense.

I’m a missing link, poolroom stink, I can’t talk (Well that’s too bad) What’s going on, something’s wrong, I can’t work Can’t go to school, the teacher’s a fool, the preacher’s a jerk (Well that’s such a drag) Got nothing to do, street-corner blues, and nowhere to walk Violence, violence It’s the only thing that’ll make you see sense Gotta fight, nothing’s right, livin’ nowhere (That’s so sad) Watch out for the gun, snake on the run, hide in my hair You keep your mouth shut, or you’ll get cut. Haha – I like to scare (Bet you’re so mad) I’m a battery louse, a superstar mouse, I don’t care Get off my back or I’ll attack, ‘n I don’t owe you nothin’ (OK) Head for your hole, you’re sick and you’re old ‘N I’m here to tell you something Violence, violence It’s the only thing that’ll make you see sense

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2LbujFtaUQ]

From the punk era, there was “Homicide” by 999. Great song!

I believe…in homicide!

Resign to it…

Yo!

Sorry for this morbid post, but I was in a killer mood tonite and I could not resist.

Land of the Blond, Home of the Blue

Here we have two maps, one for what I am going to call blond hair, though they are calling it light hair here. The other is for what I call blue eyes, but they are calling them light eyes here.

These are of course the Aryan Prize Jewels. What is funny is that the centers of Blondness and Blueness seem to be in some cases outside of the Land of Odin and Thor.

Blondism, with an epicenter around central Scandinavia.

For instance, the lower half of Finland, plus central Sweden and Norway, are Ground Zero for blonds. You can hardly spit in any direction around there without hitting a wolverine, a caribou, or some blond and blue hottie. If it wasn’t too cold to fuck, the place would be a sexual paradise!

What is interesting about this is that the your true Nazis always held that the Finns are “Asiatics,” and therefore not really White. What’s wrong with almond eyes and submissive, slender women, I’ll never know, but the Mighty Whiteys think this Chinky stuff is no good. Better a strong German woman who looks like she could shot put you across the room I guess. Sometimes Nazis are hard to figure.

Anyway, we see that Russia, in particular far northwestern Russia, is also a Hot Zone for major breakouts of blond and blue, especially for the blue eyes.

The epicenter for blue eyes seems to be a bit east of the blond breakout, around Estonia or just to the east in Russia.

In fact, the center for azure isises seems to be around Estonia or a bit east of there in the Ingrian region, a bit south and further east than the Almogordo of the blonds, noted above as central Scandinavia. Once again, the Nazi types insist that these centers of Aryanism are fatally contaminated with them dirty Asiatic genes.

I would say that these are markers of mutations. One, for blond hair, in central Scandinavia, around 9,000 years ago, and the other, for blue eyes, in Estonia around the same time.

Why they persisted is a mystery, as they add little Darwinian fitness. I assume that the blond and blue chicks were in hot demand by the fur-draped fellows up there. They all jumped on the blond and blue chicks, and the early Neolithic Marilyn Monroe types pumped out lots of babies. What’s surprising is that these evil bitches stealing all the good men were not all killed by their proto-Viking sisters.

Anyway, since gentlemen prefer blonds, the mutation spread, and nowadays we even have blond and blue Jews, though most of those come from bottles and contact lenses.

The maps are interesting. The general Scandinavian – Baltic region seems to be an epicenter, with the Finnic region predominating. Taking the median of the blond epicenter in central Sweden with the blue eyed epicenter around Novgorod in Russia just east of Estonia (Ingria), we get a blond-blue epicenter around Tampere, Finland in southern Finland about 150 miles north of Helsinki. Northwestern Russia has a lot of Finnic and general Scandinavian genes. After all, the St. Petersburg region and environs was ruled by Swedes for centuries.

We have a strange strip of blond along the forbidding Pomeranian coast of Poland, near the Riffians in the Rif and Chleuh in the Middle Atlas.

The Riffians in particular are very light – 36.

Czechs have lighter eyes than Slovaks, and Turks have lighter eyes than most Italians, perhaps due to heavy Slav influence. The far south of Switzerland has darker eyes and hair than the Swiss to the north of them. This is the Italian, Lombard and Romansch speaking region of Switzerland.

Epic Beard Man is 62 Year Old Thomas Bruso

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF6W3206l70]

This video is going viral as Hell right now. It shows a drunken, belligerent younger Black man, possibly around 40, who gets into it with a 62 year old White man, Thomas Bruso, a former Marine and Vietnam vet, on a bus in the Bay Area in the West Oakland area.

The argument starts when Bruso thinks he heard the drunken Black guy asking if he can shine Bruso’s shoes. Bruso says sure, you want to shine my shoes, go ahead. Turns out that’s not what the Black guy said after all, and he gets mad, calls Bruso a racist and threatens to kick his ass. Bruso apologizes, tries to maneuver out of the situation and goes to the front of the bus to get away from things.

The Black man goes to the front of the bus and hits the White guy. Colonel Sanders, or Santa Claus, or whoever he is, jumps out of his heat and beats the Black guy bloody. He is wearing a blue t-shirt that says, “I am a motherfucker!” The shirt has now become famous.

Then he runs off the bus, but he leaves his bag on the bus. The woman filming it, Iyanna Washington, calls the White man “Pinky” during the fight, siding with the Black guy, yelling, “Whoop his White ass!” Later she steals the White man’s bag. The Black man is bleeding from his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to have lost any teeth. He keeps saying what appears to be, “Bring M and M’s.” But he is really saying, “Bring ambulance.” As the Black man is bleeding, the Blacks say they are going to press charges against the White man.

There is another video of the scene outside the bus after the fight. Bruso is very agitated, running around, yelling and screaming, “Motherfucker!” at the AC Transit Authorities. I thought he turned in an excellent performance in this second video and I hope he goes on to star in more roles.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5fnjFVPCek]

Apparently, Bruso is a pretty wild guy. He got tasered at an A’s game last year. Clips are on Youtube. He was sitting in someone else’s seat and drinking when he was ordered to move. He refused to move when the cops came and they cleared the area and tasered his ass something good. Reports say that he turned in an excellent performance at the A’s game. Supporting roles were played by the cops who tasered his out of control White honky ass.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXkwa9uFBss]

Bruso has been arrested and is now in custody on assault charges stemming from this incident. He is under psychiatric observation at the moment, which seems appropriate. The more I think about this case, the less clear-cut things get.

Bruso has created a new Internet meme called Epic Beard Man and the mumbling of the drunken Black guy for an ambulance created another meme called, “Amber lamps.” Epic Beard Man has a Facebook page that is filling up with fans by the minute. He now has over 3,000 fans.

The video is going nuts on Youtube. Almost all viewers, White and Black, think the video is funny, but the video has caused a strange outpouring of racist hatred against Blacks from the Whites on Youtube. Some are saying that the White man is, “The Rosa Parks of the Whites,” which is just idiotic and an insult to Rosa Parks’ great name.

It’s just a fight between a decent guy and a drunken asshole. These situations happen all the time in White World, and the drunken assholes often get pounded just like that, while everyone cheers. I don’t see what this video has to do with race, but many people are starting to score some racist points off of it.

Commenter tulio has some great comments about this video in another post. I will reprint them here:

There is a video that is going bonkers on Youtube right now about a crazy 67-year-old white vet on a bus that beats the shit out of a younger (but not young) Black dude. The Black dude is confrontational and hostile. This video is being posted and forwarded everywhere right now.

Now personally, I think the video is hilarious. The guy deserved to have his ass beat. I don’t know anyone, Black or White that doesn’t take the White guy’s side.

However, look down at the comments. This video has many duplicates on Youtube and they are all filled with the exact same racist comments. I’ve never seen one video on Youtube generate so much racist sentiment amongst Whites.

Not only in volume, but in the speed. A new comment is being posted almost every minute. While most Blacks view it and see a funny video about a shit-talker getting his just desserts and not really a thing about race per se, the comments from whites are jaw-dropping. Besides the obvious “N” bullets being sprayed like a machine gun, it’s almost like an orgasmic experience for the Whites viewing.

The comment that stuck out to me most is where the white guy is likened to being White America’s “Rosa Parks.” That one particularly stuck with me, because I think that’s how many whites view this, on some level.

One guy on another forum a visit said the fact that he was Black made the video more satisfying. I told him that I am Black, and if he thinks it’s cool to see him get beat because he’s Black, then that’s racist and “fuck you”. He responded by calling me a Nigger despite the fact that I and just about every other Black person takes the side of the White guy. Anyway, even the Whites that aren’t posting overtly racist comments seem to be going ape-shit over it.

I have no idea how much the Youtube audience represents the hidden thoughts median White America, when allowed to speak anonymously, that’s a wild card to me. I’m under no illusions that most Whites view Backs as equals, but the level of anger and resentment you see there is stunning. To the point that it makes me wonder how Obama even got elected.

So tying this all in with this ongoing issue with respect of Blacks. I agree with Black Thought in that Whites haven’t shown respect for non-Black minorities historically either. However the disrespect of Blacks goes far and beyond what exists for any other group. I see this when I view anonymous comments.

There’s an underlying deep resentment of blacks. A man on another forum says that he sees Blacks attacked routinely on Youtube by Latinos on Spanish language videos too. As well as Asian videos. While sociologists have traditionally divided the world by White vs. non-White, I’m starting to think it’s more like Black vs. non-Black. At least when viewing social attitudes.

What else could explain why a thematically similar video with a White aggressor received virtually no racist replies.

A white man physically harasses an Asian woman, and the Asian woman kicks his ass badly right there on camera. Now I think this one is even funnier than the bus video. Now one can only imagine the responses if a Black man went up to physically harass a white woman and the white woman beat the shit out of him on tape. It would have 5,000 N-word laced responses within the hour.

So in conclusion, Black Thought and Robert Lindsay are actually both right. After pondering the reactions of this video for a moment, I don’t think their two positions are mutually exclusive.

Amerindians, Hypertension and Obesity

Repost from the old site.

I recall when I worked for an Indian tribe a decade or so ago. Some silly White liberal health workers came in one day and I went in to talk to them. What was I doing at the Indian tribal headquarters? Why, I was employed on a government grant as an anthropologist and linguist. Wow, how fascinating! And what did these silly PC health workers do? Why, they went around wherever doing health work with Indians.

Why did so many of these Indians have high blood pressure (HTN)? I was dying to know. First came denial. Whites have HTN too, you know. The angry, suspicious and uncomfortable looks were already starting. Ok, but Indians have more. Way more. What’s it all about? The entire conversation was soon veiled in hostility, suspicion and out and out bad vibes.

I finally got out of these liberal dipshits that the diabetes epidemic among these Indians was giving them HTN. Diabetes causes hypertension. How? It destroys your blood vessels by narrowing them. Narrow blood vessels gives you HTN. Why the diabetes? Abandoning the native diet and the taking up (with gusto) of absolutely the very worst (And I do mean the worst!) aspects of the White man’s diet.

I suggested that the high Indian rate of diabetes was due to genetics and an inability to adapt to a White diet they had not evolved to eat. By this time my conversation with the idiotic White health workers had deteriorated, and I kept trying to rescue it. Did you know that genetics and genes do not exist, or, if they do, that they are irrelevant in humans? That there is no such thing as race?

I had wandered into race-denier Hell and, as in a Sartre play, there was “No Exit.” Accusations of racism, veiled and otherwise, were hurled in my direction. I was an evil racist and I deserved to die.

Turns out Indians, like indigenous peoples all over, have adopted a thrifty metabolism due to surviving many famines. You have a horrible famine, and the only folks that survive are the ones who can eat hardly any food and somehow manage to not die. Their genes get passed on, and you end up with a race that doesn’t need much food to get by.

They live well on a native diet, but on a modern diet (which they invariably adopt the very worst aspects of) they become obese and develop epidemic diabetes and all of the resulting problems. This is also true among Oceanians, Aborigines and Hispanics, who have lots of Indian blood.

The Indians’ idiotic response to this was to blame Whitey for creating an evil diet and I guess force-feeding it to poor helpless Indians, probably by feeding tubes while they were strapped helplessly to their hospital beds. My response, muttered under my breath many times, was, “So quit eating it already!”

Actually I said it out loud a few times. Yep, they admitted doggedly, we gotta quit eating this crappy White man’s food. Next time you see them at the supermarket, it’s a whole shopping basket loaded up with the very worst foods in the store, and the Indian pushing it can barely squeeze through the aisle.

Some people never learn.

Indians are addicted to the Blame Whitey Game. It’s their favorite pastime.

A Flynn Effect For Filipinos in the US

We have remarked upon a number of cases in which movement from a Third World country to a 1st World country results in an IQ gain for the Third Worlders in the 2nd generation. The results will be listed below and the data can be found by searching the archives on the blog (I’m too weary to look them up and link them); anyway, regular readers have already read the original pieces.

               Pre-West      Post-West*  IQ Gain

Jamaica         71           86          15
US Blacks**     72.5         87          14.5
India           83           94          11
Mexicans        85           95          10
Philippines     86           93.5        7.5
Chinese         97.5         105         7.5
Japanese        97.5         105         7.5
Morocco         84           89          5





Post-West refers to second generation. The figure
for US Blacks is their theorized genetic IQ based on 
African/Caribbean scores plus the White

The Filipinos, Mexicans and US Blacks went to the US. The Indians and Jamaicans went to the UK. Moroccans went to the Netherlands. Gains ranged from 5-15 points in the second generation. This is above and beyond the Flynn gains already taking place, and probably ongoing in most of those countries.

The gains are where these ethnic groups actually closed the gap with Whites by the amount of the gain in the third column. Looked at in another way, these groups closed the gap with Whites by 5-15 IQ points in a single generation. In addition, there are ongoing Flynn gains occurring alongside these migration gains, but they are not showing up as IQ gains because the Whites are pacing and matching the others precisely.

The Filipinos’ IQ’s are 13 points below the 106.5 for Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, giving them an IQ of 93.5. This is a full 7.5 point Flynn rise over the 86 IQ in the Philippines just from moving to the US.

However, Filipinos are starting to come close to US Whites in occupational success due to extra-IQ factors. This is the part that is very interesting. In other words, despite IQ’s that are a full 6.5 points below that of US Whites, Filipinos are beginning to match Whites in occupational success. This is because Filipinos have extra-IQ factors above and beyond the extra-IQ factors that the Whites have.

The extra-IQ factors are simply postulated, but they may have to do with “introversion.” Along with that, we may find self-discipline, orderliness, a strong work ethic, punctuality, ability to follow orders, putting in extra time on the job, cautiousness, ability to self-train and self-teach, etc. All of these things will tend to increase with introversion and probably decrease with extroversion.

As Whites are considerably more extroverted than Filipinos (Asians), Filipinos will probably score better on many extra-IQ factors than Whites, with the end result being that the extra-IQ factors allow the Filipinos to overcome an IQ deficit and nearly reach parity with Whites on the job.

The Filipino figures come from James Flynn’s book, Asian Americans: Achievement Beyond IQ. In the book, Flynn shows that the second generation of Chinese and Japanese made not only remarkable IQ gains against US Whites, going from the 97.5 IQ of their parents to the 105 IQ of the second generation (and passing Whites at the same time) but they were on average working at positions that were 10-20 points above where they should have been working based on their IQ’s.

The question arises, What about US Blacks? The fascinating thing about African-Americans is that they have an unexplained 14.5 IQ rise above and beyond what ought to be their genetic IQ.

The hereditarians have never been able to explain this well. On of their feints is to say that IQ in Africa (= 67) is artificially lowered by malnutrition. Well, possibly, but then why is Black IQ about the same in the Caribbean (= 71)? Keep in mind that Caribbean Blacks often have a small amount of White in them (Jamaicans have

That means they are mentally retarded, but we have already had the discussion about this on the blog. The commenters and I agree that Blacks in Africa and the Caribbean with 70 IQ’s are not retarded in the sense that a White person with a 70 IQ is. In this sense, the tests don’t seem to measure Black intelligence properly. On the other hand, while they are not retarded, I don’t think that your average 70 IQ African is all that intelligent.

I’m getting at a couple of things here. First of all, can Blacks make use of these extra-IQ factors to at least overcome their 13.2 point IQ deficit with Whites in the sense of at least performing above their predicted IQ level on the job? Keep in mind that in order to do that, Blacks would have to display these extra-IQ factors above and beyond the level of the Whites. Since Blacks are the most extroverted race of all, this seems dubious.

On the other hand, we have a large up and coming Black middle class that is itching for success. By dutifully emphasizing the extra-IQ factors listed above, upwardly mobile Blacks will at least be able to perform above their IQ level on the job.

On curious area that no one considers is personal skills. There seems to be a lot of evidence that Blacks are more socially adept than Whites. In jobs where social intelligence and skills are highly valued, conscientious Blacks may be able to outperform their White co-workers and at least partially close the occupational success gap with them.

Second of all, it seems possible that Africans moving to the West may experience ~15 point IQ rise in the second generation. It hasn’t showed up yet, but no one has looked for it. So the 67 IQ Africans by the second generation should be at IQ 83. It’s not that great, but there are more or less functional countries with 83 IQ’s. There aren’t that many with ~70 IQ’s. To the extent that Africa can mirror the environment of the West in Africa itself, they won’t even have to come here.

This is groundbreaking work that is receiving very little ink, less than it deserves. At the very least, rising IQ with migration and extra-IQ factors show that neither is IQ set in stone, nor is it destiny.

References

Flynn, James R. 1991. Asian Americans: Achievement Beyond IQ. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Does a Higher IQ Make You Superior?

There’s a debate raging in the comments section about race and IQ. I’m staying out of it, but if you’re familiar with this blog, you know very well how I stand on this issue. In some ways, I feel that the less said about it the better, although it’s true I do talk about it a lot on here. That’s because I’m trying to fashion some sort of a progressive response that’s fair to all ethnic groups out of the very un-PC facts on the ground. I’m more interested in raising IQ on this blog. That’s why you see all these posts on the Flynn Effect. Anyway, enough about me.

In the debate, Tulio makes an interesting observation:

Many people feel that if you say one group is collectively less intelligent than another, that is akin to saying that group is “inferior”. After thinking about it though, I’m not sure why someone being of less intelligence makes them inferior. No matter how smart you are, there is always someone smarter. Do you feel that you are inferior or less human than that person? I don’t. Do White Gentiles walk around with an inferiority complex to Jews? Or feel that they are inferior? I’ve never seen it.

Why does being smarter make someone superior per se? We don’t think that on an individual level, so why on a racial level? It just means they’re better at abstract reasoning on average. It doesn’t say whether you have common sense, whether you’re a nice person, a hard worker, a loyal friend, sociable, obey the law or gazillion other qualities we judge people on. Doesn’t say anything about them having superior humanity.

Tulio makes an excellent point. In ordinary society, the one I live in, no one cares about brains. I just went to the drug store to fill a prescription. There were mostly Hispanics in there, and I know some of them. A few poor Whites too. One thing I can tell you for sure: Not one of those people in that store gives two shits about IQ! Or even intelligence, really.

As someone with a genius IQ (over 140), I can tell you, it’s not so great.

You know how many people in Meatspace think my stratospheric IQ is cool? Just about zero!  It doesn’t benefit me in life. One more thing. You know how many chicks in Meatspace think that Chicago Tower of an IQ is cool? Just about zero! It’s been this way my whole life. No one cares if you’re a brain. Definitely, no one has ever thought that that made me a superior person! I did, sure, but who cares what I think? What matters is society. Society does not treat us brains like we are superior! If anything, it’s the opposite.

So in the real world Meatspace of ordinary humans, no one gives two shits about IQ or even intelligence really. Although I have done extremely well with women in my life, nevertheless, all my life, females have been abandoning and scorning us brains in favor of blockhead dumbass hulking caveman, thug and jock types. I don’t chicks don’t even want to screw brainy guys unless they have something else going like Game or Looks! They want to screw double digit IQ caveman with a club types.

So what good is a high IQ? Sometimes I wonder. But in general, society does not treat a higher IQ group, not to mention individual, as superior to a lower IQ group or individual, assuming the low IQ folks are not so dumb that it’s obvious that something is wrong.

In Meatspace, if you bring up IQ, you get resentful stares and attempts to change the conversation. Please don’t think this is something that happens to me a lot. I don’t do this very often because I know how people think. I do bring up my IQ in Meatspace sometimes, but 9

However, I do bring it up on the Web, but not very often either because I know how people think. But I have brought it up a few times on this site. And why not? This is an IQ blog after all where we talk about IQ as one of our main subjects of interest. But I can’t bring this up at all on the Web. I get slammed all the time for discussing my own numbers on here.  Now I don’t think discussing your own achievements is bragging – bragging is more in how you do it. What is interesting though is that I have “bragged” about quite a few other things on here, and no one cared, or I got nothing but praise. But IQ? Nope.

It’s funny a guy can go on and on about his achievements with women, in business, in sports and in building up his bank account, and the chicks will shower him with propositions and flirtations like confetti at a parade. But dare mention those two upper case letters denoting intelligence quotient, and most females will start screaming at you and calling you a braggart.

They’re lying, but women always lie. Thing is, women don’t care about braggarts; if anything, they like them. The biggest braggarts get the most and best women. It’s just that to women, they only give you pussy points for bragging about certain things, like the size of your damned wallet! The size of your IQ has no importance to a female in terms of their libido (in fact, it probably cools them down), so they raise a hissy fit if you bring it up.

Even around a bunch of White people, IQ even in general, leaving your own numbers aside, is not a popular subject. People start squirming in their chairs and trying to change the subject. Why? Because as far as IQ goes, even most Whites don’t have a very high one! So they resent the whole conversation. Even Whites with IQ’s around 115-120 or so or resent it, because they’re insecure, and they think that’s too low.

If you tell Whites that Blacks have lower IQ’s than Whites, most have never heard of it. Some are intrigued.

“Really?”, they ask, eyes twinkling with intrigue.

“Yep, it’s true.”

Then they sort of chuckle and say, “Well, that figures,” or “I always thought so.”

But then they move back into the “Yeah, but IQ means nothing” thing.

If you tell Hispanics, at first of course they don’t understand the whole subject (What do you expect?), then they mildly disagree.

“No way, it’s not true.” But they’re not agitated, just dismissive.

Then you convince them that it’s true.

Then they say, “Yeah well, so what? Who cares?”

The White nationalists and cognitive elite types have a dream. If they keep pounding away at this race-IQ thingie, at some point the evidence will become so overwhelming that Joe Sixpack White Guy will put down his beer, say, “Niggers ain’t got no brains!”, vote to rescind the Civil Rights and Fair Housing Acts, affirmative action, and all anti-discrimination laws, then I guess shave his head, and what? Move to Idaho?

Forget it! Your average White person is not that smart and resents the whole IQ subject and debate for that very reason. This issue will never resonate with average White people.

The charming folks hoping to spark the Great White Revolution would do better to focus on Black crime, an issue that resonates much better with average Whites.

Black Response to “We Don’t Respect You”

I really enjoyed this response to We Don’t Respect You from a very pro-Black Black man who calls himself Black Thought. It’s sounds Afrocentric to me, but he says he’s not an Afrocentrist. There is an Afrocentrist who regularly comes to the comments section too.

However, I do respect some of these Afrocentrist types as long as they are polite to us.  There is something shameful about a Black person, or any person, who does not respect their own race or kind. It seems like such a basic, primal instinct. Respect your family, respect your tribe, respect your people, respect your race.

Since your race is part of you, if you don’t even respect your own race, how is it you respect yourself? The Afrocentrists at least stick up for their own kind. As everyone should. Everyone should stick up for their own. As an ethnocentric White man, I lament the fact that Whites can’t respect ourselves anymore. But what I want for myself, I want for others too. I want Blacks to wake up in the morning and say, “Thank GOD for making me Black!” I want everyone else to do the same, Hell, even the Aborigines.

His response, followed by mine, is over at his blog.

I can’t overemphasize the importance of this lack of respect because so much seem to flow right out of that. If we could ameliorate Whites’ lack of respect for Blacks, race relations would be so much better, no? Since so much flows out of it, I’d love to see a major Black political leader bring this up, if they could politically get away with it.

What if Barack said, “You know, White people just don’t respect Blacks. That’s all there is to it. This is the crux of the problem.”? Now, politically, he could not do that, but let’s suppose for a minute he could.

Could you imagine that all over Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and rightwing radio? What would White people say? Would they deny it? Some would, sure. Would they admit it? Now that would be interesting! Surely there would be some Whites calling in to the stations and telling it like it is, “Hell no! Hell NO we don’t respect them!” Then the firestorm debate would be off. I’d love to see a fascinating conversation like that engulf this nation for a week or two, or however long the public’s attention span is these days.

Obama, US Imperialism, and the US Colony of Haiti

In the comments thread on Alpha Unit’s latest piece, finally Lafayette Sennacherib hits it on the head and cuts through the crap:

I’ve read a lot of criticisms of both the Red Cross and especially Doctors Without Borders re ‘impartiality’. I can’t link to anything offhand, but I wouldn’t assume they’re saints; all these NGOs are heavily compromised by US govt funding.

As to what seems to be criticisms here of the reaction of the Haitians. The criticisms seem to be based uncritically on the media presentation, which reminds me of the coverage of New Orleans post Katrina – ‘black gangs looting etc’.

I, ME PERSONALLY, knew there was a desperate shortage of water in Haiti within 12 hours. How long do you think it was before US intelligence knew that?

Greg Pallast points out that FEMA has had EVERYTHING ready in Florida since Katrina – bottled water, medical supplies etc – all ready to go practically at a moment’’s notice ; they could easily (well, with some effort anyway) have organised drops of bottled water all over the country withing 12 hours. All those that needed water desperately are dead now, within the first 48 hours.

More than a week later we’re just hearing on the MSM that “aid is beginning to get through to limited areas.” We still don’t hear about bottled water being dropped by helicopter.

Instead we hear about the US takeover of the airport, planes carrying aid being turned away, tens of millions of dollars being spent to send aircraft carriers and destroyers, and ten thousand troops on the way.

We get the excuse that they can’t send out the heavy digging equipment because of ’security concerns’ i.e. they’re demonising the Haitians as violent animals like they did to New Orleans, as an excuse to let them die, to cull the population in preparation for a US invasion, to have a solid base to fuck up Cuba and Venezuela and fuck up all those coloured people who thought they were going to have schools and health-care and all that.

The history of what the US has done to Haiti over the years is readily available for those who care to check it out – this ‘aid effort’ is the coup de grace.

I have to say the blatant racist gloating in some of the comments here is particularly nauseating, and just downright cowardly. Kicking people while they’re down is not very attractive, but hey that’s the way our culture is going. Maybe I’m old fashioned.

Good show, LS, good show! I really appreciate LS’ comment. He really hit it on the head regarding how Haiti is nothing more than a particularly disgusting and despicable colony of US imperialism. ATM, Haiti is a US, French, Canadian and even UN (!!!) colony, all apparently for to serve the ulterior motives of imperialism and multinational corporations.

Aristide was the best hope that Haiti ever had, and the US overthrew him because he dared to raise the minimum wage! When the gangsters supported by the US, France, Canada and the UN (!!!!) took over, the first thing they did was to rescind all of Aristide’s progressive programs. They then destroyed (!!!) all of the health clinics and schools that he had built. Threat of a good example and all of that.

LS makes completely clear here that Obama is just another US imperialist President. I’m not sure he’s much better than Bush in the foreign policy area. He’s negotiated with Colombia to allow 8 (!!) new military bases in Venezuela (mostly to threaten Venezuela and to a lesser extent Bolivia and Ecuador, he supported the coup in Honduras and probably gave the go-ahead for it, and he’s continuing Bush Administration ultra-imperialism WRT to Haiti.

As far as imperialism goes, Obama is just a Black man in White face. US Blacks generally oppose US imperialism, but Obama is as establishment as they come.

WRT to the endless racist arguments of “Haiti as an example of what niggers* do naturally,” fine, but let’s take a look at something. The racists say that Haiti is “the only all-Black state in the Americas.”

Fair enough, but deceptive. For really, most of the Caribbean, excepting mulatto Cuba and Dominican Republic is Black as the night. The whole region is Black, top to bottom, east to west. Yet the region more or less functions, or at least we don’t see the Haitian style clusterfuck. Black IQ’s are generally the same throughout the region. So, without the particular nightmare of Haiti’s history, including US and French imperialism in spades, Haiti would have probably ended up like any other Caribbean nation.

The racists go on and on about how wonderful the Dominican Republic is, and how much the DR’s hate Haitians (They even enslave them, just like we used to!). Look, DR people are mulattos, with an emphasis on the Black. Does a little bit of White really change and civilize Blacks all that much? According to the racists here, yes. Yet these are the same racists who apply one-drop rule to any White with a taint of Black poison in him.

The racists don’t make sense. Either adding White to Blacks is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or it’s hopeless as they’re already nigger-tainted as it is.

Tulio hits on the head in the comments section. Haiti is a particularly clusterfucked place and race doesn’t have a lot to do with it, otherwise every other Caribbean island would be just as nigger-fucked as Haiti.

Borg points out that Haitians tend to act pretty good once they get here. Indeed they do (Not that I argue bringing lots of them over here!). I would gather that in one generation, they even gain 15 IQ points just from living in the US. We don’t have a tremendous amount of problems with Haitians in the US. Puerto Ricans and Dominicans are much more of an issue. The reason may be screening. Haitians are rigorously screened, and only the best are allowed in. Puerto Ricans are completely unscreened, and DR folks mostly came here as illegals.

The racists are going on and on about how lazy the Haitians are. I don’t want to go into an examination of Black “shiftlessness,” but that’s one thing that Haitians can’t be accused of. In Haiti, the line is clear. You don’t work, you don’t eat. Often, even if you do work, you don’t eat. The social programs that we know of here in the US are nonexistent in Haiti.

One of the reasons, the US, France, Canada and the UN overthrew Aristide was because he initiated a free lunch program for the poor of Haiti. Threat of a good example! Haitians work their asses off, all day, every day, if they have a job. Even if they don’t have a job, survival is a fulltime job in Haiti. As we might expect, Americans note that Haitian immigrants have a strong work ethic. In fact, Haitians in the US are scathing in their attitudes towards US Blacks, whom they regard as disgusting layabouts.

I’m not trying to defend the bad behavior of so many Haitians, but there’s a lot more going on in Haiti than just TNB**

*Used sardonically. **Typical Negro behavior, sardonic phrase synonymous with “ghetto.”

A Reclassification of the Dutch Language

Warning! This post is quite long – it runs to 126 pages. Frequently updated – last updated May 24, 2015.

Where the Dutch language begins and where it ends is an important question. Ethnologue splits Low Franconian-Low Saxon (whatever that is) into 15 languages – Flemish, Dutch, Zeelandic, Afrikaans, Achterhoeks, Drents, Gronings, Plautdietsch, Sallands, Low Saxon, Stellingwerfs, Twents, Veluws, Westphalian and East Frisian Low Saxon. Instead of the confusing Low Franconian-Low Saxon, we will henceforth refer to the same as “Macro-Dutch.”

This treatment will lump together many of the Dutch Low Saxon lects as Dutch, put East Frisian Low Saxon into Dutch, put Westphalian and German Low Saxon into German, move Limburgish out of German to Dutch where it belongs, and create a dozen new Macro-Dutch languages.

An important question is the position of Frisian languages in all of this. Currently Ethnologue has them in Anglo-Frisian. Gooskens 2004 makes a good case that Frisian is better analyzed as Macro-Dutch than Anglo-Frisian based on Levenshtein distance. She is probably correct, but I am going to leave Frisian outside of Dutch until I can analyze it better.

Anyway, genetically, Frisian is a part of an Anglo-Frisian family (Gooskens 2004). However, Frisian has drifted far away from English due to massive influence from Dutch such that it now is closer to Dutch than the Scandinavian languages are to each other (Gooskens 2004). It depends on if you wish to analyze Frisian based on its genetic history or on which language it is closest to.

One thing that ought to be dispensed with immediately is the notion that German, Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans are intelligible with each other. The truth is that Hochdeutsch speakers can at worst barely understand a word of any of them and at best have only Neither is German intelligible to Dutch speakers, even after 3-4 years of studying German. This even holds for Low German, which is often held to be intelligible with Dutch. It’s not, even after 3-4 years of study and even to speakers of Dutch-German border lects in the Netherlands that are presumably closer to Low German than the rest of Dutch. After 3-4 years of German, Dutch speakers have only 5

Nor are Frisian and Dutch mutually intelligible, another common claim. They have combined intelligibility of 6

The Dutch either have a nationalist complex or are possible simply ignorant or indifferent on the question of what constitutes “Dutch.” They take a very conservative, nationalist view of the language question. To the Dutch, every language spoken in the Netherlands and some spoken outside of it is Dutch. Brabantian, Flemish, Veluws, Afrikaans, Limburgish, Bergish, Guelderish, Kleverlandish and Dutch Low Saxon are often all considered to be dialects of Dutch.

To be fair to the Dutch, I’m making a similar claim here, but instead of calling all of the above dialects of Dutch, I will call them separate languages under an umbrella called Macro-Dutch which subsumes them all.

The Dutch do recognize Limburgs and Low Saxon as minority languages.

Spain, Germany, Italy, France and Sweden do not recognize the languages under the umbrellas of Macro-Spanish, Macro-German, Macro-Italian, Macro-French and Macro-Swedish umbrella.

Spain does not recognize Asturian, Aragonese or Extremaduran. France does not recognize the many langues d’oil. Italian does not recognize Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Venetian, Emigliano, Romano, Neapolitan or Sicilian. Sweden does not recognize Scanian, Gutnish, Jamska or Dalecarlian. Germany does not recognize Bavarian, Swabian, High Franconian, Low German, Westphalian, Upper Saxon, Ripuarian or Pfaelzisch.

Probably the reasons that these languages are not recognized is due to the national consolidationist efforts behind a standard language and the fears of splintering the standard into substandard forms and the separatism that may ensue. So the Dutch are simply following in standard European modernist tradition.

This has resulted in problems and violations of language rights for speakers of other Low Franconian lects. For instance, Zeelandic is definitely a separate language, not a dialect of Dutch. Zeelandic speakers petitioned to have their language recognized as a minority language nine years ago, but the Dutch government has refused to grant this request.

The truth may disturb many Dutch speakers. For Dutch is not just the 15 languages confusingly listed in Ethnologue; it is actually 30 separate languages, which I will attempt to demonstrate below.

Method: Various “Dutch” and “Low Franconian” lects were analyzed on the basis of mutual intelligibility with Standard Dutch to see if they warranted treatment as separate languages. A rough guide was >9

Other lects in Ethnologue’s treatment were analyzed to determine whether they belonged in “Macro-German” or “Macro-Dutch.” Westphalian and German Low Saxon were moved to Macro-German; the rest were moved to Macro-Dutch.

Anecdotal reports and scientific studies were reviewed, and native speaker informants were interviewed. Where intelligibility estimates are controversial, scientific intelligibility studies could always settle the matter. The creole was not counted.

Results: Ethnologue’s Low Franconian-Low Saxon was expanded from 15 into 35 languages based on mutual intelligibility. Below, separate languages are in bold, while dialects are in italics. Dutch, like Arabic, Italian, German, Chinese and so many others, is a macrolanguage.

Discussion: This work is merely a working hypothesis intended to be discussed and criticized by scholars and interested parties. I would be interested in criticism on a peer review basis. Criticism must be both constructive and friendly, otherwise it will be summarily rejected. This is very much a work in progress.

Dutch Creoles

In recent years, there were five Dutch creoles spoken in Indonesia, Guyana and the US Virgin Islands. It appears that four of the five are extinct, and one is barely alive.

Berbice Creole Dutch is barely alive, spoken in Guyana by only four speakers. There are another 15 with limited competence. It is spoken in the Berbice River region of the country. About 1/3 of the words and most of the morphology is from the Nigerian Bantu language Izon, a language with 1 million speakers. The rest of the lexicon is mostly from Dutch. 1

Low Franconian Languages and Dialects

Standard Dutch, Algemeen Nederlands or AN (henceforth, AN) is a major world language spoken by all 15 million residents of the Netherlands and an additional 7 million speakers elsewhere. Although one might suspect that Dutch goes all the way back to the oldest Old Franconian, actually, the lects closest to Old Franconian are French Flemish, West Flemish and Zeeland Flemish. Dutch proper seems to have broken off sooner.

Dutch has many dialects, but they are all more or less intelligible. There are two forms of Dutch in general – Hollandic and Brabantian. Both are part of AN. Modern Belgian Dutch is much more Brabantian than Hollandic.

There is also Brabantian Netherlands Dutch, a dialect of Netherlands Dutch, and Brabantian Belgian Dutch, a dialect of Belgian Dutch or Vlaams (Grondelaers 2009).

Surinamese Dutch is a Dutch dialect, easily intelligible with AN, that is spoken in Suriname. It has 280,000 speakers, or 6

Netherlands Dutch is the Dutch dialect spoken in the Netherlands, differentiating with Belgian Dutch. It is widely understood throughout the country, especially the Standard Dutch variety of this dialect that has been popularized in the Netherlands since the 1960’s.

Netherlands Brabantian Dutch is a Dutch dialect spoken in North Brabant Province in the Netherlands (Grondelaers 2009). It is easily intelligible with AN. This dialect has about 2.45 million speakers.

Belgian Brabantian Dutch is the same thing as the Verkavelingsvlaams described below. It is spoken in North Brabant Province and in Antwerp Province by about 3.4 million speakers. It is being replaced by French in Brussels, but it is still widely spoken elsewhere.

Stadsfries is a mixed dialect spoken in certain urban areas of Friesland such as the towns of Leeuwarden, Dokkum, Bolsward, Sneek, Stavoren, Harlingen and Franeker. Originally Frisian speakers, they gave up Frisian for Dutch about 500 years ago. The vocabulary is mostly Dutch with Frisian pronunciation. AN speakers can understand this dialect pretty easily. Lately it is seriously declining and has low prestige, hence it is becoming a sociolect spoken mostly by low-income people in the cities.

Snekers is a Stadsfries dialect spoken in the Friesland city of Sneker. It traces back to 1600 or so when locals abandoned West Frisian for Hollandic speech as an elite gesture, since Hollandic was not spoken much outside of the Holland Provinces. By 1800, the rest of the city had modeled their elitist behavior after the rich and the whole city spoke Snekers. It continued to be a highly valued speech until 1900. People kept speaking it a lot until WW2.

The disdain towards Frisian, seen as peasant speech, continues in many Snekers speakers to this day. In the 20th Century, many rural people moved to the city, and many foreigners moved there too. Snekers became a speech used only by Sneker natives among themselves. They spoke Dutch or sometimes Frisian to newcomers. Nowadays, Snekers is dying. The youth have taken it up, but they speak a watered down version that is probably intelligible to AN speakers.

Hollandic Dutch is the other large dialect of Dutch besides Brabantian. Hollandic is spoken in the provinces of North Holland and South Holland by about 6 million speakers. This dialect is intelligible with AN. Hollandic Dutch is the variety that is closest to AN. It is divided into two lects, North Hollandic Dutch and South Hollandic Dutch.

IJmuidens is a dialect spoken in by the lower classes in IJmuiden, the third largest port in the Netherlands, in North Holland. The dialect is probably readily intelligible with AN.

Haarlems is the dialect spoken in Haarlem in North Holland, especially by the lower classes. It does not differ much from Amsterdams or AN. This area has long had the reputation for being the place where the purest Dutch is spoken, although this is no longer true anymore. Nowadays, the purest Dutch is spoken in places like Dronten on the Dutch polders in the IJsselmeer.

Nijmeegs is a very interesting dialect spoken in the city of Nijmegen in eastern Gelderland. Although strictly speaking it should be a South Gulderish dialect, it has heavy Hollandic features such that it may well be intelligible to AN speakers. Until the late 1800’s, residents of the city were speaking a typical South Gulderish dialect. However, in the late 1800’s, the upper class of the city began speaking a Randstad dialect similar to Amsterdams and Haags.

The lower classes quickly began speaking the same dialect, and the traditional dialect of the city disappeared, as it was poorly valued anyway. Nijmeegs still has some East Brabantian, Limburgish and Achterhoeks features, but it also lacks many characteristic Limburgish and Brabantian features of surrounding dialects.

Gouds is a South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Gouda, 20 miles northeast of Rotterdam. In many ways it is similar to AN. With mass immigration and compulsory education in AN, the real Gouds is hardly heard anymore.

Rotterdams is the South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Rotterdam. It differs little from AN. This is because the standard for Hollandic dialects, dating back to 1600, was the Rotterdams dialect. Its influence spread throughout the region, first to the upper classes and then to the lower classes as they imitated the speech of the rich.

The Rotterdams dialect does have many unique features, mostly due the waves of immigrants who have come to the city, each bringing their own language which added to the Rotterdams dialect. In the 1800’s, there was a large influence from Brabantian and Zeelandic speakers. In the 1900’s, the influences have become more varied, as speakers of Arabic and the Papiamento or Surinamese creoles added their words to the mix. It is still heard throughout the Rotterdam region and in the cities of Spijkenisse, Hellevoetsluis and Capelle aan den IJssel to the east and southwest.

Bildts is a mixed Frisian-Dutch lect spoken in the Het Bildt, a polder region in Friesland northwest of Leeuwarden that dates back to the 1500’s. Many immigrants came from the South Holland area to this part of Friesland to help create the polders. Their South Hollandic lects mixed with the Frisian spoken by the local farm workers to create this interesting mixed dialect.

Intelligibility between Bildts and AN is not known, but in a dialect map published in 1974 showed Bildts the furthest of all from AN (Berns 1991). On the basis of that study, Bildts may indeed be a separate language, but better intelligibility data would be nice.

Midslands is a North Hollandic dialect, similar to Stadsfries, that is still spoken in on Terschelling Island off the coast of Friesland in the village of Midsland. It has Hollandic and Frisian influences. Intelligibility data is lacking.

Amelands is a another dialect like Midslands and Stadsfries. It has mostly Hollandic vocabulary with Frisian grammar. There are four villages on the island, each with their own dialect. Nevertheless, all dialects are intelligible with each other.

The dialect developed in the 1700’s when Hollandic migrants moved to the island, probably for trade, and the locals gave up their Frisian speech for Hollandic. The process was not complete, and Amelands was the result. It is still very widely used. 8

Westfries consists of two parts. One, the Westfries language, which consists of Island Westfries. And two, Land Westfries, which is part of the North Hollandic language.

Island Westfries or Eland Westfries is a major split in Westfries. This is spoken on the islands and former islands of Texel, Vlieland and Wieringen and on land in the city of Enkhuizen. Island Westfries has poor intelligibility with the more common Land Westfries due to its archaic character, hence it may be a separate language.

Wierings is an Island Westfries dialect spoken on the former island of Wieringen. It is very close to Tess, the dialect of Texel Island. Wierings is rapidly disappearing and is only spoken by the older generation. Younger people speak a weak Wierings which looks more like Land Westfries. There is a navy base on Wieringen, so many non-islanders have come to live there.

Tessels is an Island Westfries dialect spoken on the island of Texel in North Holland that is so different from the rest of Island Westfries that it must be a separate language. It is still widely spoken, especially in the rural areas, but it is not much spoken in the larger cities. There are different varieties of Tessels spoken in the towns of Oudeschild, De Cocksdorp, Den Hoorn and Oosterend. The dialects differ greatly, and speakers from different towns do not necessarily understand each other fully, hence intelligibility is somewhat marginal among the dialects.

North Hollandic is a language spoken in North Holland Province. It consists of the Land Westfries, Zaans and Waterlands dialects. The situation is confusing, as there is also North Hollandic Dutch, a dialect of AN.

Land Westfries is a dialect of North Hollandic Dutch, a major split in the Westfries language. This variety is less conservative and has been influenced more by Dutch. The more archaic varieties of Island Westfries have poor intelligibility with Land Westfries, hence it may be a separate language.

Kennemerlands is a North Hollandic Dutch lect spoken in Kennermerland around the cities of Haarlem and Beverwijk. It arose in the Middle Ages due to contact between Frisian speaking fishermen and speakers of North Hollandic Dutch. Towards the north, it looks more like Westfries and the Zaans dialect. It is best analyzed as a transitional dialect between North Hollandic and Westfries. It is unintelligible to AN speakers, and is apparently a separate language.

Durkers or Egmonds is a strange dialect, often analyzed as either Westfries or Kennemerlands, spoken on Egmond aan Zee in the north of North Hollands Province. In this treatment, we will analyze it as Kennemerlands. It is not intelligible with AN (Anonymous January 2010)

Zaans-Waterlands is a North Hollandic lect spoken in North Holland Province. It is composed of two dialects, Zaans and Waterlands.

Zaans is an archaic North Hollandic dialect spoken in the Zaan, an old settled and industrial area between Amsterdam and Haarlem. It is spoken in the city of Zandam and in the towns of Wormerveer, Krommenie and Zaandijk. It apparently arose out of Westfries. Zaans has difficult intelligibility with AN.

Waterlands is a Zaans-Waterlands dialect that is spoken between the Zaan and the Schokland due to fierce storms. The Schokland residents spoke a strange dialect called Schokkers which was basically a Low Saxon dialect similar to Urkers.

Markens is a very unusual Waterlands dialect that is spoken on the former island of Marken. It also received large input from the fleeing residents of Schokland. Markens is one of the most unusual dialects in the Netherlands and has been the object of many studies. It has difficult intelligibility with AN, but intelligibility with the rest of Waterlands is not known.

Markens appears to have a heavy base of Frisian or even Old Frisian. It appears to be undergoing dialect leveling under the pressure of the mass media and immigration, and young people typically do not speak pure Markens.

Goois is a North Hollandic dialect spoken in Het Gooi, a region in the far southeast of North Hollands. Cities in this region include Naarden, Bussum, Huizon, Blaricum, Laren and Hilversum. Opinions on this dialect are varied. One view is it is a Dutch-Low Saxon transition dialect, mostly in the far east of Blaricum, Laren and Hilversum. That would be transitional to West Veluws. This view sees the rest of the area as Hollandic. There is also influence from the Utrechts dialects. The dialect is still alive, especially in the three eastern cities discussed above.

South Hollandic is a lect spoken in South Hollandic Province. A similar situation is going on here as with Brabantian and North Hollandic. As there is Brabantian Dutch and North Hollandic Dutch and Brabantian and North Hollandic languages, so there is South Hollandic Dutch and the South Hollandic language. The South Hollandic language is mostly gone now, as dialect leveling has moved most of the dialects to South Hollandic Dutch. However, it remains alive in the form of the Strandhollands and East IJsselmonds dialects.

Aalsmeers is a dialect spoken in the city of Aalsmeer in southern North Holland near the border with South Holland. Traditionally, it was a Strandhollands dialect, but it has lost most of its Strandhollands features and is probably not a part of that group anymore. It has a similar genesis with the Strandhollands language, in that it was formed by immigrants from the Frisian-speaking north moving down to the area long ago.

However, due to geographical isolation (they were cut off on three sides by marshes or lakes and only accessible via a sliver of land) they were cut off from the rest of Strandhollands and the convergent evolution with it ended. There was also a group of Mennonites who came down from Friesland and settled in the area.

Immigrants probably kept speaking Frisian here longer than in other places. In general, this dialect is best seen as transitional between North and South Hollandic. The original Aalsmeers dialect is nearly extinct. Intelligibility data with AN is not known.

Strandhollands is a very conservative dialect of the Hollandic language spoken in the fishing villages in the area of Sheveningen and Katwijik aan Zee in the Holland Provinces. Intelligibility in general is marginal at best and hardly possible at worst between this lect and AN (Anonymous January 2010), hence it is a separate language.

This is a very archaic South Hollandic language that has preserved many old features, while the rest of South Hollandic behind the dunes has trended towards Hollandic Dutch. Strandhollands retains many features of Medieval Dutch. It is interesting that the standard dialect of The Hague is close nearby.

It emerged about 400 years ago and its provenance is obscure. Probably fishermen from elsewhere on the coast, such as Friesland and and the Zuiderzee moved into the area to take up fishing. The language has a strong Frisian substrate. Probably the isolation of the villages helped to keep the lect different from surrounding evolving lects.

The Strandhollands dialects become more intelligible with AN, in general, as one moves to the south. The least comprehensible ones are generally in North Holland Province. Intelligibility data between this and the rest of South Hollandic, especially East IJsselmonds, is needed.

Wijk aan Zee is a Strandhollands dialect spoken in the fishing village of Wijk aan Zee that has poor intelligibility with AN (Anonymous January 2010). The town is located west of Beverwijk.

Zandvoort is a Strandhollands dialect that is hardly comprehensible to AN speakers (Anonymous January 2010). It is spoken in Zandvoort on the coast west of Haarlem.

Noordwijks is a Strandhollands dialect spoken in the fishing village of Noordwijks an Zee in South Holland Province. Intelligibility with AN is somewhat marginal (Anonymous January 2010). Noordwijks is probably the easiest Strandhollands lect for AN speakers to understand.

Katwijks is a Strandhollands lect spoken in the fishing village of Katwijks an Zee in South Holland Province. It is based on an archaic version of Leids, the dialect of the city of Leiden. Katwijks, like Zandvoort and Wijk aan Zee to the north, is barely comprehensible to AN speakers (Anonymous January 2010).

Schevenings is a Strandhollands dialect spoken in the fishing village of Scheveningen in South Holland Province. It has marginal intelligibility with AN (Anonymous January 2010). This dialect is said to be based an archaic version of Haags, the dialect of The Hague.

Zoetermeers is a very divergent South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Zoetermeer 10 miles east of the Hague. This was always an isolated farming village, so it was not effected much by the trends effecting the Haags dialect a short while away. In the 1960’s, the population grew from 10,000 to 120,000 as immigrants flooded into the Hague region. Hence, only a few locals speak the dialect anymore.

Westhoeks is spoken in the Westhoek in northwest North Brabant. It’s a Hollandic dialect spoken in Brabant. No one is sure why. They are Protestants, and this may have something to do with it, but it’s more likely a case similar to Bildts, where many Hollandic speaking immigrants moved to the area after the polders were created in the 1600’s and afterward. Intelligibility with the rest of South Hollandic is not known.

Westhoeks is divergent enough from the rest of South Hollandic to be given its own category in many analyses. It has some influence from Dordts, the old dialect of Dordrect not far to the north.

Fijnaarts is a Westhoeks dialect spoken in the village of Fijnaart in North Brabant.

Dordts is a South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Dordrect that is intelligible with the rest of South Hollandic. It has heavy Zeelandic and Brabantian influences. In the 20th Century, it underwent dialect leveling under the influence of the much less divergent Rotterdams dialect in Rotterdam. The strongest Dordts is now heard in the center of the city.

IJsselmonds is a South Hollandic lect spoken south of Rotterdam on the old island of IJsselmond, now reclaimed from the sea. The former island can now be seen via satellite as #9 on this map. In general, it is south of Rotterdam between the Niewe Maas and the Spijkenisse Rivers. The region is now heavily industrial, particularly gone over to shipbuilding. The lect is quite a bit different from both AN and Rotterdams. It has two main variants, West and East IJsselmonds.

West IJsselmonds has come under severe Rotterdams influence and can hardly be heard in its pure form anymore. It is only barely alive in the town of Pernis.

East IJsselmonds is extremely divergent from AN and Rotterdams and cannot be understood outside the region. It has mostly undergone dialect leveling and in general is rarely heard. The youth speak a watered down version that is intelligible with AN. Only in the city of Hedrik-Ido-Ambrecht can the true lect be heard on an everyday basis. Given that it’s unintelligible outside the region, it may be a separate language. Intelligibility data between this and the rest of South Hollandic, especially Strandhollands, is needed.

Ambachts is the last remaining holdout of the East IJsselmonds language. This is a deeply conservative dialect, the most conservative of the language, such that the lect of one village may differ greatly from the next. It has striking influences from the Umbrechts-Alblasserwards dialect group to the east.

Baorendrechts is a deeply conservative East IJsselmonds dialect that is spoken in the city of Barendrecht. It has been mostly superseded by AN these days.

Bulessers is another deeply conservative East IJsselmonds dialect spoken in the city of Bolnes. It is almost extinct, under heavy pressure from AN.

Zwindrechts is an East IJsselmonds dialect spoken in Zwijndrecht. It has undergone serious dialect leveling due to the effects of industrialization but can still be heard, mostly in farmers. It has some Dordts influence.

Rekkarkeks is a South Hollandic lect spoken in the city of Ridderkerk, halfway between Rotterdam and Dordrect. This is a very unusual lect that is very different from AN. Hence is has poor to marginal intelligibility with AN, and thus, it may well be a separate language.

It is located just to the east of the East IJsselmonds language, hence its unusualness is probably due to its East IJsselmonds features. It is barely alive and has only a few speakers left. A diluted version is still quite alive. Intelligibility data with the East IJsselmonds language is urgently needed.

Hoekschewaards is a South Hollandic dialect spoken on a former island southwest of Dordrecht, between the Spijkenisse River and the Haringvliet Channel. The city of Numansdorp is located in this region. This dialect has strong IJsselmonds and Albasserwards tendencies. These are much stronger than the Dordts influences. It has three divisions, West Hoekschewaards, East Hoekschewaards and Gravendeel. It is still very much alive, though it is coming under heavy influence from Rotterdams and AN.

West Albasserwards is spoken in the Western part of the Albasserwards, east of Rotterdam about halfway to the Utrecht border. The dialect is dying out in many areas, and there is little interest in preserving it. However, in many of the rural areas, a strong dialect is still alive.

In the eastern part of the Albasserwards, the dialect is like that of Utrecht, but in the west it is quite Hollandic, although it has some Utrecht influences. The dialect differs even from village to village. It is spoken in cities such as Sliedrecht and Papendrecht. The Papendrecht dialect is almost gone due to heavy immigration.

Slierechs is the very divergent West Albasserwards dialect spoken in the city of Sliedrecht. People here have taken more interest in their dialect than elsewhere in the region, and there are regular CD’s and books issued on it.

Utrechts-Alblasserwaards is a dialect group of Hollandic dialects spoken in Utrecht Province, far southeast South Hollands and a small part of Gelderland. To the south there are dialects heading into Brabantian and to the east, there are more dialects heading into South Gulderish. The dialect has low prestige, and there is little interest in it, even among speakers. Nevertheless, it is still learned by children, and there are 330,000 speakers of this dialect.

Utrechts is spoken by the lower classes of the city of Utrecht, capital of Utrecht Province. Nowadays it is spoken more in the rural areas around the city than in the city itself, but even in the city, it is still spoken in certain districts. There is a lot of immigration into the city and emigration out of it, so the dialect is dying.

Vijfheerenlands is an Utrechts-Alblasserwaards dialect spoken in the Vijfheerenland region in the southeast of South Holland. This area includes the cities of Vianen, Meerkerk, Leerdam and Lexmond.

Eemlands is a confusing set of dialects spoken in the eastern part of Utrecht and has strong Veluws influence. Some say that they are Utrechts-Alblasserwaards dialects, and others say that they are West Veluws. The best analysis is that they are transitional between the two varieties, in other words, that they are Low Franconian-Low Saxon transitional dialects. They are spoken in Soest, Amersfoort and Bunschoten. Amersfoort and Bunschoten tend to be considered more West Veluws, and Soest tends to be seen as more Utrechts. With the exception of Bunschoten, these dialects are highly endangered.

Geldersevalleis is a set of dialects spoken in the Gelders Valley, 2/3 of which is in Gelderland and 1/3 of which is in Utrechts. The towns of Ede, Wageningen and Veenendaal are located in this region. These dialects are very hard to characterize, as they have West Veluws, Utrechts and South Guelderish tendencies. They are seriously declining and becoming more Hollandized.

West Veluws is a strange dialect usually collated with Dutch Low Saxon, but which is in fact a Low Franconian dialect. Practically speaking it is best seen as transitional between Low Franconian and Low Saxon. For the most part it is intelligible with AN, but as one moves to the north and east of the West Veluws area, West Veluws gets harder for AN speakers to understand. This dialect has heavy Dutch influence. In most places, this is a dying dialect, and it is not spoken much by young people anymore.

Even the forms of West Veluws still spoken in the home are coming under increasing AN influence. It is spoken in Amersfoort, Spackenburg, Bunschoten, Nijkerk, Barneveld, Putten, Voorthuizen, Ermelo, Elspeet, Uddel, Leuvenum, Harderwijk, Hierden, Nunspeet, Lunteren, Otterlo and Huenderlo. In Nijkerk, Amersfoort, Spackenburg and Bunschoten in the west of the West Veluws region, the dialect is nearly dead.

Brabantian is actually a separate language. It is distinct from Netherlands Brabantian Dutch, which is merely a dialect of Dutch (Grondelaers 2009). The real hardcore Brabantian is dying out, but it is highly divergent, and Dutch speakers say it is incomprehensible. Intelligibility is far lower than for Zeelandic. However, Verkavelingsvlaams speakers can understand Brabantian pretty well, since Verkavelingsvlaams is very Brabantian.

Brabantian is dying out in the Netherlands, but it is still spoken in Tilburg and in the rural areas of Nord Brabant. There is quite a bit of confusion about what is the pure Brabantian and what is Brabantian Dutch, but the key is intelligibility. Brabantian Dutch is easily comprehensible to an AN speaker, and the real Brabantian is not at all. Other than South Brabantian, which is a separate language, all of the Brabantian dialects are mutually intelligible.

North Central Brabantian is a dialect of Brabantian that is spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium in a strip that runs along the border around the towns of Ravels, Tilburg, Loon op Zant, Waalwijik, Vlifjmen, Huesderf and Drunen.

Tilburgs is a hard North Central Brabantian dialect that is still widely spoken in the city of Tilburg in the southern part of the Netherlands. It is intelligible with the rest of Brabantian (Anonymous January 2010).

East Brabantian is spoken in the eastern part of North Brabant. It is one of the main Brabantian divisions. The various divisions of East Brabantian include Kempenlands, North Meierjis, Peellands, Geldrops and Heeze en Lendes.

It includes the towns of Eindhoven, Veldhoven, Vught, Boxtel, Oirshchot, Best, Acht, Middelbeers, Eersel, Waalre, Mierlo, Luijksgestel, Bergelijk, Aalst, Heeze, Leende, Son, Helmond, Berjeijk, Schijndel, Lieshout, Beek, Gemert, Aarle-Rixtel, Aasten, Someren, Liessel, Duerne, Bakel, Mill, Veghel, Volkel, Uden, Nistelrode, Heesch, Zeeland, Boekel, Sint Michielsgestel in the Netherlands and Arendonk and Lommel in Belgium. East Brabantian is intelligible with the rest of Brabantian (Anonymous January 2010).

unintelligible outside of the nearby area. Hence, it may well be a separate language.

Northwest Brabantian is a Brabantian dialect spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is spoken in Breda and the surrounding region to south into Belgium.

Cities in which it is spoken include Breda, Baarle-Hertog, Oosterhout, Steenbergben, Made, Raamsdonksveer, Roosendaal, Putte, Geertruidenberg Hoogstraten, Brecht, Moerdjik, Oudenbosch, Bergen Op Zoom, Huijbergen, Rijsbergen and Woesndrecht in the Netherlands and Woostwezel, Meer, Ekeren, Merksom, Kapellen, Lillo, Stabroek, Meerle and Rijkevorsel in Belgium.

This dialect was created from the Eighty Years War. After the war, this Brabantian-speaking region was essentially depopulated, and afterward, a large movement of immigration from the Antwerp region occurred, spreading the tendencies of the Antwerps dialect. Northwest Brabantian consists of three major dialects, Antwerps, Baronies and Markiezaats. Antwerps is spoken in Antwerp and north to the Netherlands border. Baronies is spoken in the area around Breda and Markiezaats is spoken in the west over by Zeeland.

Bredaas is a Northwest Brabantian dialect spoken in the city of Breda that is dying out. It is mostly spoken in certain areas and with the older generation. It tends to re-emerge around Carnival time though.

Markiezaats is spoken in the west of North Brabant around the cities of Bergen op Zoom and Steenbergen. It extends over to the Drimmelen region to the northeast and generally includes everything west of Breda.

Antwerps is a hard Brabantian dialect spoken in Antwerp, Belgium. It is intelligible with all the rest of Brabantian (Anonymous January 2010). This dialect is widely disliked in Belgium because it is neither Flemish nor a Dutch dialect, and hence is poorly understood.

It is often heard in the Belgian media, but it is rarely subtitled, and this is the cause of the frustration with non-Antwerps speakers. East Flemish speakers say that they cannot understand it. This language is spoken in Antwerp. In a study, 5

This dialect is one of the most influential in terms of inputs towards the creation of Verkavelingsvlaams. Verkavelingsvlaams at the moment is heavily based on the Antwerps dialect. There is some uncertainty regarding the intelligibility of Antwerps with surrounding lects.

Students who recently went to school in Antwerps say that they could not understand students who came from villages in the Antwerps area. It is not known what lects the villagers were speaking. But since people living in Antwerps say they cannot understand the villagers around them, we have to split it off into a separate language.

Wase is the name for a group of Brabantian dialects spoken in the Waseland in the far northeast of East Flanders. The capital of this region is the city of St. Niklaas. The area was originally wide fields bounded by willow trees. It flooded and was drained a few times. Many turnips are grown here.

Maaslands is a dialect of Brabantian that is spoken in a narrow strip in North Brabant south of the Maas River. It is spoken in the towns of Empel, Maren, Lith, Herpen, Oijen, Megen, Ravenstein, Oss and Grave, all of them along the Maas River.

Bosch is a Maaslands dialect spoken in Hertogenbosch, a large city a bit south of the Maas River in North Brabant. The dialect is still pretty well alive, but its use varies throughout the city, with some areas speaking a lot of Bosch and other areas in which it is rarely heard. Due to immigration and the fact that it has become a commuter town, the dialect has been declining for some time now.

Nederbetuws is a confusing dialect, usually included in South Guelderish, spoken in the Lower Betuws in Gelderland. It actually has heavy Brabantian features. The dialects of the river cities of Tiel and Culemborg are quite different. It is spoken in the towns of Tiel, Culemborg, Buren, Geldermalsen, Wadenoijen, Ophemert, Waardenburg, Herwijnen and Gorinchem. This is mostly a rural area, with a lot of livestock, fruit orchards, vegetables and greenhouses.

South Brabantian is a very divergent lect within Brabantian that is very hard for other Brabantian speakers, even those from nearby Antwerp Province, to understand (Anonymous January 2010). Therefore, it may well be a separate language. It is spoken in Brabant Province in Belgium and around the capital of Brussels. This area has retained the most extreme and archaic Brabantian features. It is under heavy pressure from Verkavelingsvlaams, especially in the cities and less so in the countryside.

The least intelligible variety seems to be spoken from Brussels west to the East Flanders border, especially in the rural areas and near the southern and western borders.

Brussels in the name for a group of South Brabantian lects that were traditionally spoken in Brussels, and still are by a small number of old people. In the past 200 years though, the language of the capital shifted to French. The remaining Brabantian speakers shifted to some form of Dutch, and many today speak some Dutch standard, usually VRT. At any rate, the original Brussels South Brabantian lects are now almost extinct, spoken only by the older generation, most of whom are also bilingual in French.

Traditionally, Brussels lects were very diverse and were not intelligible with Antwerps Brabantian or Leuvens South Brabantian from about 1650 on. Increasing French influence after the Eighty Years War which ended in 1648 resulted in a closing off of Brussels to most outside influence and increasing French influence on the Brussels lects. It was still the most widely used language in Brussels until the French occupation around 1800.

It then began to decline as more residents started speaking French. In part this was an urban elitist effect, as the local rural areas all spoke Brabantian dialects, and the city became increasingly French speaking, especially the upper class. To sum up, to speak French meant you sounded like an aristocrat and to speak Brabantian meant you were talking like a farmer.

During the 1800’s there was a big debate in Brussels about which form of Dutch to make the official language – some common Flemish form or something more like Netherlands Dutch? People could not make up their minds, and this gave people one more reason to just speak French instead.

Brussels is almost extinct, and only some older Brusseliers speak it. Apparently no one else, including almost everyone in Brussels, can understand them. As Brussels is barely understood even in the city, clearly it must not be understood outside the city either. Hence, Brussels may be a separate language. But intelligibility data with the rest of South Brabantian would be nice to have.

Marols is a divergent Brussels dialect traditionally spoken in the colorful Marollen district, traditionally a poorer, rundown working class area, that was recently full of drug dealers and bums, but is now undergoing gentrification. Marols is a strange mixture of Spanish, Yiddish, Walloon and Brabantian. The Yiddish and Spanish is from many Spanish Republicans and Polish Jews moving to this district just before WW2. Marols is rarely heard these days, and intelligibility with the rest of Brussels is not known.

Liekert is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in Liedekerke, Belgium in Brabant Province on the border with East Flanders. It is unintelligible with the rest of even Flemish Brabantian, including Antwerps.

Leuvens or Leives is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in the city of Leuven in Belgian Brabant. Many immigrants moved to the city after WW2, and use of the dialect reduced dramatically. Intelligibility between Leuvens and the rest of South Brabantian is not known.

Ninove is apparently a South Brabantian dialect spoken in the city of Ninove in the east of East Flanders. It is probably close to Liekert, and hence is very hard for even Flemish to understand.

Elingen is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in the town of Elingen on the border with Hainaut Province. It is not intelligible at all with Brabantian proper (Anonymous January 2010).

Aalsters is a South Brabantian dialect that is very hard for even the Flemish to understand. It is spoken in the city of Aalst in East Flanders, Belgium, on the border of Brabant Province. It is also spoken in Opwijks, Asses and Tenants over the border in Brabant Province.

Tiens is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in Tienen in Eastern Brabant, Belgium. It has Limburgish tendencies. It is dying out and tends to be spoken more by the working classes, but is still pretty widely spoken. Intelligibility with the rest of South Brabantian is not known.

Afrikaans is a separate language, recognized by Ethnologue. It is spoken in South Africa by 13.2 million people, including 6.45 million native speakers and 6.75 million second language speakers. 12-16 million people have basic knowledge of the language.

A study noted that Dutch speakers have 5

Zeelandic or Zeêuws is a separate language, recognized by Ethnologue as a different Low Franconian language from Dutch. Zeelandic is not easily understood by AN speakers. It is spoken in Zeeland Province and in South Holland Province on the island of Goeree-Overflakee. This area is south of Rotterdam. It is best thought of as transitional between Dutch and West Flemish.

There are a variety of dialects, Walcheren, Zuid-Beveland and Goeree-Overflakee among others. Toward the north, Zeelandic looks more Hollandic or Dutch, and towards the south, it looks more Flemish. The dialects of Zeelandic Flanders are really outside of the definition of Zeelandic and are best described as East and West Flemish instead.

Although it is clearly a separate language from Dutch, Dutch nationalism mandates that it be seen as a dialect and not a separate language, hence the Dutch government refuses to recognize it as a separate language. The language is still in pretty good shape, though it is declining.

It still has 220,000 speakers. In some rural villages, up to 9

Along with French Flemish and West Flemish, Zeelandic is part of Southwest Low Franconian. These languages are said to be the remains of the oldest of Old Franconian.

Burgerzeeuws is a Dutch dialect spoken in Zeeland. Though it ought to be part of the Zeelandic language, it is not. It is originally Zeelandic, spoken in the cities of Zeeland, which was then replaced with Hollandic by status conscious upwardly mobile people. Like Stadsfries, this language developed in the 1600’s. It is especially spoken in Middelburg and Vissingen.

In the 1990’s, only 1/3 of urban Zeelanders spoke Zeelandic, compared to 2/3 in the province as a whole. This dialect is still alive though, even among the youth, especially in conservative Christian circles. In some areas this dialect is scorned, while in others it is valued. Burgerzeeuws has unknown intelligibility with AN, but it is probably easier to understand than Zeelandic proper.

Oostvoorns is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the far north of the region that is actually spoken outside of Zeeland proper in the area called Oostverne just to the north. Some say that this dialect is actually Hollandic and not Zeelandic. It’s probably best seen as a transitional Zeelandic-Hollandic dialect. Intelligibility with AN is not known, but it’s probably better understood to AN speakers than the rest of Zeelandic.

Goerees is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the Goeree region of Zeeland. The dialect of the fishing village of Ouddorp is quite different, with many unique words. It is quite a bit different from the rest of Zeelandic. This dialect is still widely spoken.

Flakkees is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the region of Overflakee, east of Goeree. It is spoken in Ooltgensplaat, Middelharnis and Sommelsdijk. Flakkees is divided into three subdialects – West Flakkees, East Flakkees and Brabants Flakkees. Flakkees is still very widely spoken.

Schouwen-Duivelands is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the Zeelandic region of Schouwen-Duivelands. In some places such as Bruinisse the dialect is in great shape, with 9

Thools is a Zeelandic dialect spoken on the former island of Tholen is Zeeland. It is undergoing some decline due to widespread immigration but is still widely spoken. There is a sharp barrier between Thools and the North Brabant area just to the east. The city of Oud Vesssemer speaks a mixed North Brabantian-Zeelandic dialect.

Walchers is a Zeelandic dialect spoken on the former island of Walcheren in Zeeland. It is spoken in the towns of Domburg, Westkapelle, Koudekerke, Arnemuiden and Oost Souburg. The dialect of the fishing village of Westkapelle is very different, with many unique words. In Westkapelle and Arnemuiden, the dialect is still doing very well. In other places it is under heavy pressure from tourism and immigration.

South Bevelands is a Zeelandic lect spoken in the Zuid Bevelands area of Zeeland. This area is still very rural, so the lect is in great shape. South Bevelands was scarcely touched by Hollandization during the Golden Age of Holland, hence its archaic character.

South Bevelands is extremely diverse, varying wildly from one village and town to the next to the point that communication is so seriously impaired that residents from different towns typically use AN to communicate rather than their town lects. On the face of it, it’s tempting to split off every town as a separate language, but that seems wild and threatens chaos, and until we get more data, it’s thankfully premature.

However, since South Bevelands is not even intelligible within itself, it can’t possibly be intelligible with the rest of Zeelandic, hence it may well be a separate language.

Land of Cadzands is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the far south of the Netherlands in Zeelandic Flanders. It is properly seen as a Zeelandic dialect transitioning to West Flemish.

Dutch Low Saxon is a group of lects related to Dutch and German that are very hard to classify, especially in terms of their relationship with Low German in Germany and with Low Franconian (Macro-Dutch) in the Netherlands.

I originally put Dutch Low Saxon in with Low German and added it to my German reclassification. However, after thinking this over for a year now, I now believe that Dutch Low Saxon belongs much more in Macro-Dutch than in Macro-German. Nerbonne 1996 makes a convincing case that Dutch Low Saxon is more properly seen as Macro-Dutch than as Macro-German in a scientific paper analyzing Levenshtein distances between Dutch lects.

There is an argument floating around that all of Dutch Low Saxon is intelligible with all of German Low Saxon. This is certainly not true. Looking at Veluws to Schleswigsch, those two languages are not intelligible with each other at all. In fact, even Groningen and Veluws are not intelligible within the Netherlands alone.

Arguing against the notion of Dutch Low Saxon as being a Dutch dialect, many Dutch say that Dutch Low Saxon is not intelligible with Dutch. There is marginal intelligibility of around 9

Dutch Low Saxon includes four groups: Friso-Saxon, Westphalian, Gelders-Oaveriessels and Plautdietsch.

Friso-Saxon is a group of Low Saxon lects spoken in Groningen that have all been heavily influenced by the East Frisian language. These lects are Gronings-East Frisian Low Saxon, Stellingwerfs, Westerkwartiers, Kollumerpompsters, Kollumerlands, Middaglands, Middle Westerkwartiers, South Westerkwartiers, Hogelandsters, Stadsgronings, Westerwolds, Veenkoloniaals and Oldambtsters.

It is often stated that Friso-Saxon is intelligible with general Low Saxon across the board across the border in Germany. This is not true; it is only intelligible with East Frisian Low Saxon, which is not part of the greater German Low Saxon language. For instance, Gronings, Westerwolds and Veenkoloniaals have only 5

What is difficult is dividing up Dutch Low Saxon into different languages. Ethnologue has gone too far, with proper Dutch Low Saxon divided into eight separate languages – Gronings, Veluws, Sallands, Drents, Stellingwerfs, Twents, Achterhoeks and Plautdietsch. We have reduced this complexity quite a bit here, by reducing Dutch Low Saxon to Friso-Saxon, Stellingwerfs, Urkers and Plautdietsch – four languages, and a reduction of Ethnologue’s classification by 5 languages.

Gronings-East Frisian Low Saxon is a Friso-Saxon language, consisting of two parts, Gronings in the Netherlands and East Frisian Low Saxon across the border in Germany.

East Frisian Low Saxon is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in the East Frisian peninsula of northwestern Lower Saxony, Germany. It is intelligible with Gronings in the Netherlands. However, it has only 5

This dialect has an East Frisian substratum. There is dialectal diversity between the western and eastern branches. There are also speakers of this dialect in Iowa, about 500 of them, mostly over age 50. The classic variety of East Frisian Low Saxon probably looks something like this. Dialects include Hinte, Ems (Emsfriesisches), Weser (Weserfriesisches), Jeverländer, Harlingerländer, Ommelands and Mooringer.

Hinte East Frisian Low Saxon (Hintener) is a divergent dialect of East Frisian Low Saxon, but intelligibility data with the rest of East Frisian Low Saxon is not known. It is spoken in the town of Hinte in Germany on the Dutch-German border. Hinte is spoken in Eastern Friesland (Ostfriesland) in Lower Saxony in Germany and Groningen is on the Dutch side. It is somewhat similar to Twents.

Westerkwartiers is a group of Friso-Saxon dialects spoken in the far southwest of Groningen Province. This is the group of Friso-Saxon dialects that most resembles West Frisian. A good characterization of this group would be to say it is transitional from Gronings to West Frisian. The cities of Leek, Zuidhorn and Marum speak this dialect. The group includes Kollumerpompsters, Kollumerlands, Middle Westerkwartiers, South Westerkwartiers and Middaglands.

Kollumerpompsters is a Friso-Saxon Westerkwartiers dialect spoken in the city of Kollumerpomp and the surrounding area in the far east of Friesland. The municipality of Kollum speaks this dialect.

The Gronings group of dialects that are spoken in all of Groningen Province, some of Drenthe Province, and a bit of Friesland Province in far northeastern Netherlands. They have 320,000 speakers. They have a heavy Old Frisian (East Frisian) substrate.

Along with Limburgish, it is the group spoken in the Netherlands farthest from Dutch. Yet Gronings is intelligible with East Frisian Low Saxon across the border in Germany. Gronings is very close to Drents, but it is far from Achterhoeks, Twents and Stellingwerfs, and is Hogelandsters is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in the far north of Groningen in a region called Hogeland. This is said to be the “purest” Gronings of all, and it is the hardest for AN speakers to understand. The cities of Leens, Ulrum, Baflo, Uithuizen, Bedum, Winsum, Loppersum and Uithuizermeeden are located in this region.

Stadsgronings is the Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in the city of Groningen itself. It is close to North Drents. The dialect is dying out in the city itself due to immigration of large numbers of students from outside the region who do not speak Gronings.

However, many people still speak Gronings in the city and some are more or less Gronings monolinguals who do not speak ABN well. These tend to be people age 40+ (Felder 2015).

Noordenvelds or North Drents is hard to analyze, but it is best analyzed as Friso-Saxon and not Drents proper. This dialect is close to Stadsgronings. It is spoken in the north of Drenthe Province in the towns of Roden, Norg, Eelde and Vries by 38,000 people. This is nearly the same speech as Stadsgronings (Felder 2015).

Oldambtsters-Reiderlands is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in a part of Groningen called Oldambt. It is related to Veenkoloniaals and Hogelandsters and has heavy Westphalian influence. Oldambtsters has a close relationship with the Rheiderlander dialect of East Frisian Low Saxon across the border in Germany; in fact, it is basically the same dialect. East Frisian was spoken here until 1400.

This dialect is steadily declining, but holds out best in the rural areas. German is still widely spoken in this part of the Netherlands, especially in the city of Winschoten. It is spoken in Winschoten, Scheemda, Noordbroek, Heiligerlee, Beerta and Nieuwe Schans.

Veenkoloniaals is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in eastern Groningen on the border between Groningen and Drenthe Provinces and over the border into Drenthe. This dialect came into being due to peat mining in the area. In recent years it has been expanding a lot, probably because it is closer to AN than neighboring lects.

Veenkoloniaals is close to Drents but even closer to Stellingwerfs. Veenkoloniaals lacks full intelligibility with Dutch. Veenkoloniaals is quite close to Stadsgronings and almost sounds like the same lect. There are a few differences between the two. This is a harder Gronings that is even harder for ABN speakers to understand than Stadsgronings (Felder 2015).

Westerwolds is another Friso-Saxon dialect. that, like Veenkoloniaals, is spoken in eastern Groningen. Westerwolds is not fully intelligible with Dutch and has heavy influence from East Frisian Low Saxon spoken in Germany. Although it is Friso-Saxon, it is closer to Westphalian than to Frisian. It has a particularly close relationship to Ems Low Saxon spoken in Germany.

Lately it has been losing ground to Veenkoloniaals. It is spoken in a small corner of far southeast Groningen on the German border in the towns of Stadskanaal, Musselkanaal, Ter Appelkanaal, Ter Appel and Vledderveen. ABN speakers say that this is an extremely hard form of Gronings that is very hard to understand, even harder to understand than Veenkoloniaals (Felder 2015).

Stellingwerfs is a Friso-Saxon language spoken in the municipalities of Weststellingwerfs and Oststellingwerfs in southeastern Friesland Province on the border with Drenthe and Overijssel Provinces and over the border into Drenthe and Overijssel.

It is spoken in towns such as Appelscha, Noordwolde, Tjalleberd, Luinjeberd, Donkerbroek, St. Johannesga, Rotsterhaule, Rotstergaast, Delfstrahuizen, Uffelte, Diever, Vledder, Echten, Steenwijk, Giethoorn, Tuk, Willemsoord, Oldemarkt, Kuinre, Smilde, Wolvega, Oldeberkoop, Oldeholtpa, Nijeholtpa, Dwingeloo and Oosterzee.

Frisian speakers moved into the formerly Drents-speaking area when peat-digging began. This began the process of Frisianization. Stellingwerfs is not usually put into Friso-Saxon, but Heeringa 2004 makes a good case for putting it into Friso-Saxon (Fig. 4, p. 97).

One way to look at Stellingwerfs is to see it as a Drents variety intermixed strongly with a Frisian layer (Heeringa 2004). The process of Frisianization began as early as the 1200’s. Stellingwerfs probably has over 300,000 speakers in two dialects, East Stellingwerfs and West Stellingwerfs. Stellingwerfs is not close to Gronings, Drents, Twents or Achterhoeks, and it is not fully intelligible with Dutch, East Veluws is a Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Veluwe, a formerly heavily forested and swampy region along a ridge in northern Gelderland Province. This region has a lot of wildlife and used to be very popular with hunters. There are proposals to turn much of this region into a national park.

Although it is a part of Dutch Low Saxon, Veluws is marginal within this family (Smith 2009), with West Veluws looking a lot like Low Franconian (“Dutch”) proper, and East Veluws looking more like a typical Dutch Low Saxon. West Veluws and East Veluws can understand each other, and East Veluws and Twents are mutually intelligible. East Veluws is more intelligible with Dutch than any other type of Low Saxon, probably due to its close connection to West Veluws, a Low Franconian lect; however, East Veluws tends to have marginal intelligibility with AN.

Veluws is one of the lects where Low Saxon and Low Franconian are very close, similar to Gronings and East Frisian Low Saxon, except that Veluws in closer to Low Franconian, and Gronings is closer to Low Saxon. Nevertheless, Veluws is Sallands is a Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Salland region in the western part of Overijssel Province. Sallands has fewer than 300,000 speakers. Sallands lacks full intelligibility with Dutch, but is intelligible with Twents. Based on linguistic distance (Fig. 3) it may not be intelligible with Groningen. There is a transitional Sallands-Twents dialect spoken on the border with the northwest of the Twents-speaking area (ter Denge 2009). There is a lot of variability in Sallands.

Sallands is spoken in Zwolle, Zutphen, Nijverdal, Vroomshoop, Kloosterhaar, Marienberg, Hardenberg, Gramsbelgen, Lutten, Heemse, Witharen, Ommen, Oudleusen, Den Ham, Vilsteren, Dalfsen, Kampen, Heino, Lemereveld, Ittersum, Wijhe, Windesheim, Heeten, Olst, Espelo, Holten, Wesepe, Diepenveen, Lettele, Deventer, Bathmen, Genemuiden, Zwartsluis and Blokzijl.

Zwols is a Sallands dialect spoken in Zwolle, the capital of Overijssel Province. It has some similarities to Urkers nearby. 6

Dêmpters is the name of the Sallands dialect spoken in Deventer.

Zutphens is a transitional Achterhoeks-Sallands dialect that is spoken in Zutphen, a city in Gelderland. It is interesting because it has many Hollands features. Zutphens is still very heavily spoken by the population of the city.

not intelligible with Dutch.

It is spoken in Assen, Rolde, Geiten, Annen, Anlo, Eext, Klooverstervee, Gasselte, Borger, Grollo, Buinem, Elp, Amen, Beilen, Odoorn, Schoonloo, Hijken, Emmen, Valthermond, Zoordsleen, Sleen, Hoogeveen, Noordbarge, Dalen, Coevorden, Schoonebeek, Eursinge, Zuidwolde, Nieuw Amsterdam, Klazienaveen, Nieuw Schoonebeek, Zwartemeer, De Krim, Linde, Staphorst, Ruinen, Balkbrug, Meppel, Dedemsvaart, Rouveen, Den Hulst and Havelte.

Urkers is a very divergent Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon lect spoken in the small city of Urks, formerly an island in the Zeelandic Sea. It is a very conservative Protestant town with no less than 17 churches, where 9

Urkers is utterly incomprehensible to AN speakers, and on structural and intelligibility grounds, there is justification for making it a separate language. Further, a linguistic analysis based on Levenshtein distance suggests that Urkers is best analyzed as a separate language in its own right, apart from all other Dutch lects (Heeringa 2004).

Westphalian Dutch Low Saxon is a branch of Dutch Low Saxon. It contains two dialects, Twents and Achterhoeks, is heavily Germanized and collates with the Westphalian Low German spoken across the border in Germany. Twents is one of the most divergent of all of the Dutch Low Saxon lects from AN, especially the dialects spoken in Vriezenzeen, Rijssen and Wierden.

Twents is a Westphalian Dutch Low Saxon dialect with 328,000 speakers, or 6

Every town has its own dialect, but all dialects are mutually intelligible. Twents is not close to Stellingwerfs or Gronings, but it is intelligible with Drents, Sallands, Achterhoeks (ter Denge 2009) and East Veluws. Based on linguistic distance (Fig. 3) it may not be intelligible with Groningen.

In the northwest of the Twents region, there is a transitional Sallands-Twents dialect that has a largely Twents vocabulary with a Sallands inflection. In the towns of Rijssen and Enter, there is a variety of Twents spoken that uses diphthongs where other varieties have monophthongs. This may be a remnant of an earlier Westphalian variety that may have been generalized throughout the Twents region. On the border with the Achterhoeks region, there is no clear dialect border, as Twents and Achterhoeks slide into each other (ter Denge 2009).

Many Dutch speakers find Twents unintelligible.

Twents is spoken in the towns of Vriezenveen, Almelo, Rijssen, Hengelo, Borne, Enschede, Oldenzaal, Tubbergen, Ootmarsum, Weerselo, Reutum, Denekamp, Deurningen, Losser, Lonneker, Glanerbrug, Usselo, Boekelo, Haaksenbergen, Diepenheim, Goor, Delden, Markelo and Wierden.

Achterhoeks is a Westphalian Dutch Low Saxon dialect. Achterhoeks is far from Drents, Gronings and Stellingwerfs but is intelligible with Twents (ter Denge 2009). Based on linguistic distance (Fig. 3) it may not be intelligible with Groningen. Achterhoeks is not intelligible with Dutch. Achterhoeks is in very good shape, and is widely used as an everyday language.

Achterhoeks is spoken Northern Gelderland east of East Veluws in towns such as Doetinchem, Terborg, Silvolde, Ulft, Dinxperlo, Alten, Winterswijk, Meddo, Groenle, Lichtenvoorde, Eibergen, Neede, Borculo, Ruunlo, Zelhem, Hengelo, Lochem, Laren, Almen and Vorden. Interestingly, Achterhoeks speakers in Dinxperlo can communicate with speakers of Westphalian German Low Saxon in Suderwick, Germany, across the border.

Plautdietsch is a Dutch Low Saxon language that originated in the Netherlands, but then spread to other parts of the world. It forms a subgroup of its own and is quite divergent from the rest of Dutch Low Saxon. It is not intelligible with many other Low German languages, Standard German, or Pennsylvania German. Plautdietsch has 5

This language was originally a Friesland Dutch Low Saxon lect, but they moved to Prussia after they were persecuted for their religion, and later they moved to the US. This is the language of the Mennonites worldwide.

Flemish or Vlaams is a separate language, recognized as such by Ethnologue. Flemish has anywhere from 3

Hinrichs undated makes a strong case for the inclusion of Flemish as a recognized regional language in section III of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages based on linguistic distance to AN. The distance between Flemish and AN is as great as between Low Saxon and Dutch, and Low Saxon is recognized.

VRT-Nederlands, BRT-Nederlands, VT-Nederlands or BT-Nederlands are abbreviations for the form of AN spoken in Belgium. It may be thought as “Dutch with a Fleming accent.” It is easily intelligible with AN, and is increasingly heard on Belgian TV. Further, many Flemings can also speak this language, which is pretty much what they are taught in school under the rubric of “Dutch” classes. There is tremendous confusion between this dialect and “Flemish.”

This dialect is simply a dialect of Dutch or AN. The varieties subsumed under Flemish are completely different languages altogether. This dialect is making increasing inroads in Belgian life and some Flemish speakers are becoming alarmed about this.

Standard Flemish, Verkavelingsvlaams, Vlaamse Tussentaal, VT or Soap Vlaams (henceforth VT) is a koine developed recently in Belgium that is understood by all Flemish speakers and is used often on TV. It is a mixture both of an artificially created Standard Flemish and the local dialects, and AN speakers find it quite incomprehensible. It is nearly the same as Belgian Brabantian. It probably has around 3.4 million speakers in Belgium. VT is fully intelligible with the Brabantian language.

West Flemish or West Vlaams is a highly divergent Low Franconian language that, along with French Flemish and Zeelandic, is part of Southwest Low Franconian and is the closest to the original Old Franconian. This group of languages is interesting because they have retained features of Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic features. Ingvaeonic is the postulated language that gave birth to Old English, Old Saxon and Old Frisian, possibly 2,000 YBP. It was spoken what is now the Netherlands, northwest Germany and Denmark. There are also influences from langues d’oil, not so much French proper as Picard, which is spoken adjacent to the West Flemish region.

West Flemish is spoken in Zeelandic Flanders in the Netherlands, West Flanders Province in Belgium and French Flanders in Nord Province in France (see map Fig. 1). East Flemish speakers have a hard time understanding West Flemish, especially the variety spoken in France. For example, West Flemish speakers regularly get subtitles on Belgian TV. Studies have shown that speakers of Antwerp East Flemish cannot understand the West Flemish of Oostende, Diksmuide, or Kortrijk, cities in West Flanders Province (De Houwer 2008).

West Flemish has 1 million regular speakers in West Flanders in Belgium and 70,000 in Zeelandic Flanders for a total of 1.07 million speakers. It also has a few speakers in Flemish Zeeland in the Netherlands.

Brugs is a West Flemish dialect spoken in and around the city of Bruges. It is quite divergent from other West Flemish dialects and even other Flemish find it hard to understand. However, precise intelligibility with West Flemish per se and not Flemish per se (whatever that means) is needed before we can determine whether or not it is a separate language. Brugs is declining in recent days and is being replaced with a more widely spoken Flemish, possibly VT.

Kortrijks is a West Flemish dialect spoken in the city of Kortrijk in the southeast of West Flanders. It is also spoken in the towns of Kuurne, Wevelgem, Ledegem, Moorslede, Muelebeke, Tiens and Izegem. Past Tiens, it starts turning into the Brugs dialect. Past Moorslede, it starts turning into the Ypres dialect.

Ypres is a South Flanders dialect spoken in and around the city of Ypres in the south of West Flanders. It is different from Kortrijks.

Waregems is a dialect spoken in the West Flanders city of Waregem. It is different from Kortrijks and is unique in some ways. It is best seen as a West Flanders dialect heading out towards the East Flanders language. There is an entire area on the border between West Flanders and East Flanders where the dialects may be hard to characters as belonging to either the West Flanders or East Flanders languages. There is a suggestion that only those from the immediate area can understand Waregems well, but until we get better data, it is premature to split it.

Vlaemsch or French West Flemish is a highly divergent West Flemish lect spoken in France that has been diverging from the rest of West Flemish for over 300 years since Louis XIV annexed it to France around 1680. Vlaemsch is full of French loan words, and other West Flemish speakers (such as Oostende West Flemish speakers) have a hard time understanding it, so it is probably a separate language.

Though it is recognized by the French government as a minority language (as “Dutch”), it gets no support from them and has been declining for centuries. It has 60,000 speakers, 20,000 of whom use it every day. The vast majority of Vlaemsch speakers are over age 60. Vlaemsch will probably go extinct in a matter of decades.

East Flemish or East Vlaams is a separate language spoken mostly in East Flanders in Belgium but also in Zeelandic Flanders in the Netherlands. It is not intelligible with AN. For example, the East Flemish speakers in Zeelandic Flanders have a hard time understanding the Brabantian Dutch speakers across the Schelde River. Also, East Flemish speakers have a hard time understanding West Flemish.

West Flemish speakers moving to Ghent in large numbers have created so many problems that the city council took action against them for “speaking a language that no one could understand,” that is, West Flemish.

Not only is East Flemish a separate language, but there is tremendous dialect diversity inside of East Flanders. In fact, it appears that East Flanders is more than one language. East Flemish probably has about Gents is a highly divergent East Flemish lect spoken in Ghent, Belgium that appears to be a separate language. It is considered very hard to understand even by other East Flemish speakers, so it may be a separate language. To South Brabantian speakers, it may as well be Greek.

In fact, there are two different dialects of Gents, one on the west side of the city and another on the east side. In addition, the dialects of the villages around Ghent are also said to be different from Gents itself. Intelligibility data for the various dialects in and around Ghent is not known. This language has many features of a “language island,” in that it differs markedly from surrounding East Flemish lects. Gents has a strong French influence and many French loans.

Dendermonds is another highly divergent East Flemish lect spoken in the city of Dendermode. Studies indicate that other East Flemish speakers have a hard time understanding it (De Houwer 2008), so it may well be a separate language. Dendermode is about 1/2 way between Antwerp and Ghent. This language has heavy Brabantian influence, and that is why it is so different from the rest of East Flemish.

Lokers is an East Flemish dialect spoken in the city of Lokeren in the northeast of East Flanders on the border with Brabantian. Here East Flemish is transitioning to a group of Brabantian dialects called Wase, spoken in the Waseland. This dialect may be close to Dendermonds.

Limburgish is an East Low Franconian language that is spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is a separate language and is not intelligible with other forms of Low Franconian nor with any Low German. As a part of Meuse-Rhenish, it is transitional between Low Franconian (Dutch) and Low German (German).

Limburgish and Dutch had very different geneses – Limburgish came from Old East Low Franconian, and Dutch came from Old West Low Franconian. It has 1.6 million speakers. Each village and city has its own dialect, but they are all mutually intelligible. There are as many as 580 different Limburgish dialects.

Although Limburgish is said to be intelligible with Ripuarian, the truth is that it is not inherently intelligible with it. There are however some Limburgish and Ripuarian dialects on the borders of the two that are transitional between Ripuarian and Limburgish. See the South Guelderish and the Low Dietsch entries here for more on those transitional languages.

Limburgish is one of the Meuse-Rhenish languages. It is often claimed that Limburgish is intelligible with German, but this is not so. The intelligibility situation with regard to Limburgish and AN is confusing.  Some say that Limburgish has marginal intelligibility with AN (Zweers 2009), but other Dutch speakers say that they can barely understand a word of Limburgish. A study concluded that Dutch speakers have about 8

The real pure Limburgish is not intelligible with Standard Dutch at all, but what is most often spoken nowadays is a sort of a Dutch-Limburgish mixed language that is intelligible to most AN speakers. However, there are still some speakers of the real pure Limburgish around.

This Wikipedia article on Limburgish is wrong. It groups all of Bergish, South Guelderish, Southeast Limburgish and Dutch Limburgish into one “variety” or dialect, and then refuses to call that variety a language.

However, “Limburgish” is composed of at least four languages. Bergish is a separate language, not intelligible with Southeast Limburgish (6

Geleens is an East Limburgish dialect that is spoken in the city of Geleen in Limburg Province in the Netherlands. It differs quite a bit from the dialect of Sittard, even though the two cities have recently merged.

Sittards or Zittesj is an East Limburgish dialect that is spoken in Sittard in Limburg Province, the Netherlands. It’s quite different from Geleens. It is closest to dialects right across the German border, but otherwise it is a transitional Middle Limburgish-South Limburgish dialect, similar to Roermond.

Heerlen Dutch is a Limburgish-Dutch creole or dialect of Dutch spoken in the city of Heerlen in Limburg Province, the Netherlands. In the 1800’s, there were many coal miners in this area and everyone spoken Heerlen Limburgish. As the mines expanded, people came to work from all over the Netherlands and even the Kerkrade region of Germany.

None of them spoke Heerlen, and many didn’t even speak Limburgish. Later a sort of creole based on AN and Heerlen arose. What we have now is a Dutch dialect with a Heerlen base and a strong Limburgish flavor, not really a Limburgish dialect per se. Heerlen Dutch is apparently intelligible with AN.

Hasselts or Hessels is a Limburgish dialect spoken in Hasselt in Belgian Limburg. Dialect leveling has been occurring in the past 50 years as rural residents of the surrounding villages moved to Hasselt. It is best analyzed as a Belgian Limburgish dialect transitional with Brabantian.

Maastrichts is a Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Maastricht in Dutch Limburgish. It has 60,000 speakers and hence is the largest Limburgish dialect. It is still widely spoken in the city. Maastrichts differs significantly from the dialects of the neighboring villages.

Horsters is the Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Horst in Dutch Limburg. Some say that everything north of Venlo is outside of Limburgish proper and into South Guelderish. That’s an interesting argument, but we will leave it in Limburgish for now, especially since Limburgish isoglosses extend to just north of Horst. Some see it as transitional between Limburgish and South Guelderish, Kleverlandish and North Limburgish.

Tegels is is a Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Tegelen in Dutch Limburg. Although it is very close to Venlo, Tegels speaks a typical Limburgish dialect, while Venlo is North Limburgish and is probably a separate language altogether.

They are so different because Tegelen was ruled by the Duchy of Gulik for 750 years, while Venlo was under the Duchy of Gelders for 400 years. The Duchys did not end their rule of both cities until around 1800 or so. Tegelen did not go to the Netherlands until 1817, when it was traded to Netherlands from Germany in exchange for the Dutch city of Henzogenrath, which was traded to Germany.

Weerts or Wieërts is a Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Weert in Dutch Limburg. It is a Middle Limburgish dialect. Weerts, together with another Limburgish dialect spoken in Hamont in Belgian Limburg and a dialect of Bavarian, has more vowels than any other lect on Earth – 28 of them. The area around Weerts has many forests, sand dunes, bogs and marshes. This part of the Netherlands is also very Catholic. In the far north, it tends to be a lot more Protestant.

Hamont is a Limburgish dialect spoken in Hamont, on the border with the Netherlands in Belgian Limburg.

The map below (Fig. 3) is quite interesting. As we can see below, Limburgish is further removed from Dutch than Veluws, Afrikaans, and Dutch Low Saxon. Much of Dutch Low Saxon is also further from Dutch than Afrikaans.

South Low Franconian is the name for a lect spoken in Germany just east of the Limburgs Province in the Netherlands. Dialects include Jlabbacher Platt of central Mönchengladbach, Föschelner Platt of Fischeln in Krefeld, and Dremmener Platt of Dremmen near Heinsberg. The intelligibility of these German lects with the rest of Meuse-Rhenish is unclear, and it may be a separate language altogether. The closest in intelligibility would be to Bergish, Venloos and Southeast Limburgish in that order.

Southeast Limburgish (SE Limburgish) is a East Low Franconian language made up of a number of dialects that are transitional between Limburgish and Ripuarian. It has a close relationship with Limburgish. Some call SE Limburgish/Low Dietsch/Aachen German by an alternate name – Limburgish-Ripuarian of the Three Countries Area.

Some classifications put this language into Ripaurian, but it is possibly better analyzed as Limburgish or better yet Ripuarian-Limburgish transitional. The classification is important since if it is Ripaurian, this language is “German,” and if it is Limburgish, it is “Dutch.” But if we see it as Ripuarian-Limburgish transitional, this language may most properly be characterized as a Dutch-German transitional lect.

It is spoken in Belgium around Eupen, including Welkenraedt, Lontzen, Raeren, La Calamine, Eynatten, Gemmenich, and Moresnet; in the Netherlands between Ubach and Brunssum in the towns of Kerkrade, Bocholtz and Vaals, where it is known as Waals; and in a large area in North Rhine-Westphalia between the cities of Aachen and Eschweiler in the towns of Stolberg, Wurselen, Eilendorf and Kohlscheid. To the east over by Duren (Dürener Platt), we start moving into Ripuarian proper. It is also spoken in the far upper Eifel region around the Hurtgen Forest (Tulipan 2013).

It is a separate language, unintelligible to those outside the region. Most if not all Southeast Limburgish lects appear to be intelligible with each other (Tulipan 2013).

Bocholtzer is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in the towns of Bocholtz, Bocholtzerheide and Baneheide in Limburg Province. It is still very widely spoken in the area. Intelligibility is about 9

Aachen German or Aachener Platt is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in this same general region in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia on the border with Belgium. Aachen German has 6

Intelligibility with Stolberg German is excellent (Tulipan 2013). Aachen German intelligibility with Ripaurian is variable, but averages 4

Stolberg German is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in Stolberg, Germany, near Aachen. It is intelligible with Aachen German, though it has more Ripuarian influences. and 9

Kirchröadsj is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in Kerkrade in the Netherlands. It is often put into Ripuarian, but we will put it in SE Limburgish instead. Kirchröadsj is not fully intelligible with Kölsch. But it along with Vaals and related lects is about 9

Low Dietsch is a lect, often thought to be a SE Limburgish dialect, that is made up of a number of subdialects that are transitional between Limburgish and Ripuarian. However, Low Dietsch is better seen as a separate language because intelligibility with Southeast Limburgs is poor (Köhler 2015). When people say that Limburgish and Ripuarian are mutually intelligible, what they mean is that there are languages like Low Dietsch and Southeast Limburgish that are transitional between Limburgish and Ripuarian.

Around Eupen a Low Dietsch dialect called Eupener Platt (Eupen German) is spoken. Eupener Platt has only 2

Low Dietsch has been slowly dying out for a long time, since World War 1, almost a century, and it is not spoken much anymore. However, in recent years it is undergoing a Renaissance, and it is now being spoken more, even by young people, who seem to be spearheading the resurgence (Tulipan 2013). Eupener Platt has high but not full intelligibility with Kolsch (~7

The following is an example of Eupener Platt.

VERTÉLLTJERE

De Ammerekaaner By Siegfried Theissen

Wi de Ammerekaaner no Öëpe koëmte – iich gelöüf, et woër veerenvärrtech off voëvenvärrtech – wonnde ver ä gene Wéërt. Wi ver no hoërte dat-te Ammerekaaner ä gene Hollefter, a ge Schokkelaates, en gruëte Käüche oppgemaakt hoë, léïpe véër Kaïnder dahään, waïl aïnder es fertaut hoë, dadd-et ta Panneköük ömmesöss güëf. Änn taatsächlech, jédderéïne kräch esuvoël Panneköük, wi-e draage koss!

Änn véër Kaïnder krächte ouch noch en Taafel Schokkelaat, gätt watt fer allt lang neet mië geséë hoë. Dé Schokkelaat woër esu schwarrt wi di ammerekaanesche Köch.

Di Schwarrte doschde suwisuë märr Dénnsmättje schpéële! Obb-ene gouwe Daach gäng derr Vadder métt, änn éïne van di Schwarrte, dé gätt Döttsch koss, waïl-e e gannts Joër bi de Döttsche gevange gewässt woër, vrodde ann derr Vadder, off-e neet föël Gaïlt ferdeene wöül. Derr Vadder woër natüürlech mésstrouwesch änn saat: „ Watt möss-ech da davöër doë?“. – „Véër Schwarrte, saat-é Schwarrte, wäärde van de wétte Offtséëre esuë schléët behaïndelt, ver wäärde ouch esuë schléët betallt, dadd-iich nou oug ens gätt ferdéïne wéll!

Iich hann ene ganntse Kammjong voll Tsigerätte geklaut, änn dé wéll ech nou vöër voëvduusent Frang verkoupe. Et möss waal hü noch séë, waïl möëre wäärde ver versatt!“ Derr Vadder ho jo di voëvduusent Frang geschpaart, mä e saat, e möss terösch métt sinn Vro drövver kalle.

De Modder saat: „ Dat-tönnt fer! Esunne Kammjong Tsigerätte éss en Milljuën wäärt! Di Tsigerätte verkloppe ver ä Oëke, änn dé Kammjong wäärt fer béï ene Buër kwiit.“ Mä derr Vadder woër te bang. E woss neet, wu e dé Kammjong aunderschtélle köss, änn-e saat ouch: „Wänn de Ammerekaaner es schnappe, da schéëte di es, of-fer koëme joërelang ä gene Topp.“ Do saat-e Modder: „No hä ver ens Milljonäär wäärde könne, änn no hass-tou géïn Kuraasch!“ Mä derr Vadder saat märr: „Dou haas-tech förrege Wéëk allt genoch gelaïst!“

Iich woss néït, watt-e damétt maïnt, änn do vertaut de Modder: „ Ä gen Gosspertschtroët sönnd ouch Ammerekaaner änne su Huus, änn jéddesch Kiër wi ech da verbéïkoëmt, vrodde esunne Schwarrte: ‚ No Cognac? I give Cigarettes and Chocolate for Cognac!’ Iich ho allt lang géïne Konnjakk mië, mä ech ho waal noch en léëch Konnjakkflaïsch, médd-et Étikätt änn dréï Schtääre dropp.

Iich di Bubbel voll Tië gedoë, derr Schtopp dropp, alles fië togepläkkt änn no di Ammerekaaner. Wi di di Flaïsch soëge, paggde di mech en Schtang Tsigerätte änn dréï Taafele Schokkelaat änn en Tüüt, änn ië di di Flaïsch oppmaake kosste, léïp iich ewäkk, datt mech de Vokke vloëge. Wänn di mech kréëge häë, di häë miich kaut gemakkt! Mä saïtämm bänn ech neet mië dörrech gen Gosspertschtroët gegange!“

Hôessëlts is a Low Dietsch dialect spoken in Belgian Limburg in the small city of Hoeselt. It’s dying out, but a dictionary of it was recently published.

Aeres, Æres or Ourish is a West Central German Central Franconian language spoken around the German-Dutch border area that is closely related to, but very different from, Limburgish. It is spoken in several villages in the Dutch provinces of Gelderland and Overijssel and in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen.

It has 600 speakers, but there were formerly many more. Most speakers are elderly. Some say it is part of Dutch Low Saxon, others that is close to Limburgish, and others that it is close to Frisian, so its classification is quite confused. Some people say that the whole idea of this language is a fraud since good sources are hard to find, but this seems questionable. On the other hand, the existence of this language has not been well proven.

South Guelderish/Kleverlandish is a Low Franconian language consisting of South Guelderish spoken in Netherlands and and Kleverlandish spoken in Germany. It is part of Meuse-Rhenish, and hence is transitional between Low Franconian (Dutch) and Low German (German).

Dialects include Rheden, Cleves (Kleve, Kleef), Oberhausen, Essen-Werder, Venlo, Venray, Liemers, Cuijk, Groesbeek and Zevenaar, and also the dialects of Northern Limburgish. The Cuijk dialect is typical. South Guelderish has a very heavy Frisian substratum. Based on its distance to AN alone (see Fig. 3) it must have difficult intelligibility with AN, probably along the lines of Zeelandic.

Overbetuws is a South Guelderish dialect spoken in the Upper Betuws region of Gelderland. Cities in this area include Valberg, Elst and Zetten. It was widely spoken until recently, when it began to decline. It is similar to Liemers.

Kleverlandish is South Guelderish spoken in Germany along the border with the Netherlands. Kleverlandish lects are quite a bit different from South Gulderish, but intelligibility data is lacking.

This dialect is often referred to as Kleverländisch. It is spoken southeast of Munster along the border with the Netherlands and north of Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Kleverlandish is not intelligible with Bergish (Harms 2009), as one is an analogue of North Limburgish and the other an analogue of South Limburgish. Venlo Kleverlandish is incomprehensible to most Dutch speakers. Kleverlandish is still widely spoken in Wesels, Germany, at least by the older generation (Anonymous 2009).

Venloos is an extremely divergent Dutch lect spoken in the city of Venlo in the center of Limburg Province. In the north of Limburg, Limburgish is no longer spoken, and the lect changes to more of a Gulderish/Brabantian type.

Venloos is interesting because it is so different. It seems to be transitional between Limburgish, Ripuarian German, and Gulderish/Brabantian. On purely structural grounds, there are suggestions that it is a separate language, but since we are dividing only on intelligibility and not structural grounds here, that won’t cut it. In the linguistic literature, statements are made to the effect, “If Limburgish is a separate language, then Venloos must surely be also.”

Venloos is regarded as Bergish or Neiderrbergisch is a form of Low Rhenish that is analogous to Limburgish. This is Limburgish spoken on the other side of the border in Germany, but the variety in Germany is a separate language.

There are two high level splits in Neiderrbergisch, Südniederfränkisch or Bergisch and Ostbergisch. However, both appear to be intelligible, so they are dialects of a single language (Harms 2009). The following nonbolded entries are all dialects of Neiderrbergisch Low Rhenish.

Ostbergisch or East Bergisch is spoken around Mülheim an der Ruhr, Saarn and Gummersbach. Gummersbach is a dialect of this language. All dialects are intelligible with Düsseldorver Platt Bergish (Harms 2009). Ostbergisch has a close relationship with the Sallands Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon dialect spoken in Zutphen, however, the two are not completely intelligible. Dialects include Duisburg and Wuppertal.

Mülheim an der Ruhr is the classic form of Ostbergisch spoken in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany. It is quite different, but it is still intelligible with the other dialects.

Saarn Mülheim an der Ruhr is spoken in the Saarn District of Mülheim an der Ruhr, Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany, but it differs considerably from the standard version of Ostbergisch. Nevertheless, it is fully intelligible with the other dialects.

Bergish is one of two high level splits in Neiderrbergisch. It is definitely not intelligible with Cleves Kleverlandish (Harms 2009). This language is based on Low Rhenish but has acquired a heavy Ripuarian layer such that speakers feel that their speech somewhat resembles the Ripuarian language Kölsch, which is nearby (Harms 2009).

There are various dialects of this language, including Krieewelsch, spoken in central Kresweld, Ödingsch of Uerdingen in Krefeld, Metmannsch Platt of Mettmann, Düsseldorver Platt of northern and central Düsseldorf, Vogteier, spoken in Nieukerk, Solinger Platt of Solingen, Remscheder Platt of Remscheid, Rotinger Platt of Ratingen, and Wülfrother Platt of Wülfrath which is located between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal. Solingen, Krieewelsch and Wülfrath are all mutually intelligible (Harms 2009). It is also spoke in Neuss, Remscheid, Mochengladbach and Heinsberg.

Düsseldorver Platt is intelligible with Ostbergisch but not with South Guelderish, Limburgish or Aachen German. Düsseldorver Platt has 6

Düsseldorver Platt is mostly only spoken by older people these days, who nevertheless keep it very well alive. Middle-aged people have passive competence, but often not active, and young people may lack either, though some can hear the language.

Solinger Platt is a form of Bergish spoken in Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The link leads to a description of it and a transcription of a short story in the dialect. It is fully intelligible with Düsseldorver Platt (Harms 2009).

References

Anonymous. Wesels Kleverlandish native speaker, Wesels, Germany. Personal communication. July 2009.

Anonymous. Antwerps, AN and Verkavelingsvlaams speaker, Antwerp, Belgium. Personal communication. January 2010.

Berns, J.B. 1991. “De Kaart van de Nederlandse Dialecten”, in Herman Crompvoets and Ad Dams, eds., Kroesels op de Bozzem. Het Dialectenboek, Waalre:24-27

DeEllis, Jonathon. Dutch-English translator and former Venlo resident for 10 years. January 2010. Personal communication.

Felder, Lianne. May 2015. Resident of Groningen City, Netherlands, ABN speaker. Personal communication.

Gooskens, Charlotte & Heeringa, Wilbert. 2004. The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area. In: Gilbert, D. &  Schreuder, M. &  Knevel, N. (eds.), On the Boundaries of Phonology and Phonetics, 61-87. Klankleergroep, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, Groningen. Dedicated to Tjeerd de Graaf.

Gooskens, Charlotte and Kürschner, Sebastian. 2009. On the Low Saxon Dialect Continuum – Terminology and Research. In Lenz, Alexandra N.; Gooskens, Charlotte and Reker, Siemon (Eds.). Low Saxon Dialects Across Borders – Niedersächsische Dialecte Über Grenzen Hinweg, Zeitschrift fur Dialektologie und Linguistik. Beihefte 138:9-27.

Gooskens, Charlotte; Kürschner, Sebastian and van Bezooijen, Renée. Intelligibility of Low and High German to Speakers of Dutch. Dialectologia (submitted for publication, not yet published).

Grondelaers, Stef. Linguist, the Netherlands. Personal communication, August 2009.

Harms, Biggi. Düsseldorf Bergish native speaker. Personal communication. March 2009.

Heeringa, Wilbert. 2004. How Easy Is It For Speakers of Dutch To Understand Spoken and Written Frisian and Afrikaans, and Why? In: J. Doetjes and J. van de Weijer (eds). Linguistics in the Netherlands 22:13-24.

Houwer, Annick; Remael, Aline and Vandekerckhove, Reinhild. July 2008. Vandekerckhove Intralingual Open Subtitling in Flanders: Audiovisual Translation, Linguistic Variation and Audience Needs. Journal of Specialized Translation 10.

Hinrichs, Erhard; Gerdemann, Dale and Nerbonne, John. Undated. Measuring Linguistic Unity and Diversity in Europe. Project Proposal. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Köhler, Pascal. Eschweiler German and German native speaker. Personal communication. January 20, 2015

Nerbonne, J. W.; Heeringa, E.; van den Hout, P.; van der Kooi, S. Otten, and van de Vis, W. 1996. Phonetic Distance Between Dutch Dialects. In: G. Durieux, W. Daelemans, and S. Gillis (eds.). CLIN VI, Papers from the Sixth CLIN Meeting. Antwerpen. University of Antwerp, Center for Dutch Language and Speech, 185-202.

Smith, Norval. Linguistics professor, the Netherlands. Personal communication. March 2009.

ter Denge, Martin. Twents native speaker, Rijssen, the Netherlands. Personal communication. November 2009.

Tulipan, Laszlo. Stolberg German native speaker, Stolberg, Germany. Personal communication. April 2013.

van Bezooijen, Renée and van den Berg, Rob. 1999. Taalvariëteiten in Nederland en Vlaanderen: Hoe Staat Het Met Hun Verstaanbaarheid? Taal en Tongval 51(1): 15-33.

Zweers, Steven. Dutch native speaker, the Netherlands. Personal communication. March 2009.

This research takes a lot of time, and I do not get paid anything for it. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a a contribution to support more of this valuable research.

Cool Nazi-Era Photos

Here are some cool Nazi-era photos that I just ran across.

The first one below is of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1941, the famous Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact. Any idiot with half a brain knows that Stalin and Hitler despised each other and that Hitler had long ago decided to invade the USSR in order to put the final stake in “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

The USSR was the heart of the Judeo-Bolshevik beast, and only the destruction of the USSR would kill it for sure, since the beast kept sending tentacles out in the form of local Communist movements in Europe that threatened to spread Communism into the heart of the Continent.

Hitler’s hatred for Slavs is hard to figure. The Slavs were said to be a “slave race.” It’s true that the Russians had a reputation for running rather than fighting, but that was the nature of this forest-dwelling peasant people and in fact it was adaptive. When the Scandinavians first invaded down into Russia to conquer part of it, they found it curiously ill-defended. Faced with a superior force, the Russians would fight a bit, then give up land and just melt away into the mysterious forests. The Scandinavians felt it was useless to go find them, and after a while, a peace of sorts was reached.

The Russians were a forest-dwelling people at the time who lived in deep forests, often near rivers. They farmed a bit, lived off wild game and other food from the forest, and especially fished in the rivers. They weren’t exactly hunter-gatherers, but they were as close to that as a European people got at that time. They had a small population and were poorly armed, and typically responded to attacks by melting away into the forests where the enemy could not find them. Military defenses have to be judged by their adaptiveness, and this one worked well.

The Mongols also conquered a bit into Russia, and the Ottomans were so enamored of taking White slaves in the form of Slavs of various sorts that this is where the word “slave” comes from – it means “Slav,” because in Medieval times, so many slaves were Slavs.

Like most of Hitler’s crap, this had a grain of truth along with a ton of bullshit. The Russians were not really a slave race. As fare as stereotypes go, one can make a better case for the Russians as being one of the primitive, barbaric, backwards and even frightening of the White Europeans. This has long been the view from the Continent, especially of, say, the Finns, who despise the Russians as “barbarians.”

Most recently, Hitler’s view had the Russians as a “slave race” once again, this time having allowed themselves, idiotically and cowardly, to be “enslaved” by the Jews in the form of Judeo-Bolshevism. In fact, a vicious Civil War had been fought in the early 1920’s and 5 million Russians had died. Maybe twice that had starved in a horrible famine. Anyway, Soviet Communism wasn’t all that Jewish after 1927, and Stalin was no Jew. The majority of Russians went along with the Soviet program and even supported it. It was certainly better than Czarism.

Stalin hated Hitler’s guts and knew full well his plans to attack the USSR. Much of the wild industrial buildup of the 1930’s, which occurred amidst another 5 million famine deaths (though the famine was by no means intentional and there was no “Holodomor”) was a mad race to build up the USSR in order to withstand a Nazi attack that Stalin had predicted as early as 1933.

Without this mad industrialization and possibly the deaths it entailed, the USSR may not have been able to defeat the Nazis, and World War 2 would have looked a lot different. So in a sense the mad Soviet buildup of the 1930’s saved the West and the world from the Nazi Orcs.

In addition, the purges of the 1937-38, cruel, insane and evil as they were, were actually intended to ferry out Nazi spies. This was the nature of Stalin’s paranoia. It occurred in the backdrop of his increasing knowledge of the Nazi threat.

Hence, anyone with any sense knows that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a pact between two of the deadliest enemies the world has ever known.

Anti-Communists have never stopped playing up this sad pact as evidence that Nazis and Communists are the same, and that all Communists are really Nazis and all Nazis are really Communists. This makes no sense, as Hitler was much more of an anti-Communist than he was even an anti-Semite, and much of his anti-Semitism stemmed from his view that Jews were a bunch of Commies. These same folks try to say that Stalin was just as much of an anti-Semite as Hitler (this view especially popular with rightwing Zionist Jews).

This flies in the face of the common reactionary stereotype of the “JewSSR” or the USSR as a Judeo-Bolshevik state. Stalin was certainly no anti-Semite, but he wasn’t exactly a Judeophile either. The Jews suffered badly in the purges of the 1930’s. Anti-Semitism was a capital offense. When the Germans invaded later, Ilya Ehrenberg, Soviet propagandist, laid down the line, “You’re either an anti-Nazi or an anti-Semite! You can’t be both!” This at a time when traitors were getting bullets to the head in the USSR. Ehrenberg’s views were approved by and represented those of Stalin himself.

Anyway, the Pact was nothing but Stalin desperately buying another year or so before the inevitable Nazi attack. Another year to build up his defenses and to move most of their industry behind the Urals.

Although this pic is famous, I've never seen it before. That is Molotov signing the Pact, with Stalin and Ribbentrop directly in back of him. Cool pic!

Below is another interesting pic. This is of the special German Army division, the Gebrings Division, or the Handschar, made up of Bosnian Muslims that the Germans set up after they conquered the Balkans in WW2. Zionists, especially Jews, and Muslim-haters never stop talking about this division. It’s unfortunate, but the truth is that huge pro-Nazi paramilitaries were formed by citizens of many of the countries that the Germans conquered.

There were pro-Nazi divisions made up of Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, Italians, Armenians, and peoples of the Caucasus.

So singling out 10,000 Muslims for signing up for the German army is a bit absurd. I would think that many more Bosnian Muslims fought against the Nazis as part of the anti-fascist resistance, but I don’t have figures

Bosnian Muslims of the Handschar Division of the German Army reading a Nazi pamphlet called "Islam and the Jews." Notice how White these Muslims look. So much for the White nationalist notion that Muslims are all non-Whites. Don't think so.

The next picture is very interesting. These are East Indians, apparently Sikhs, serving in the German Army. They are in the regular Army, not the SS, as you can see by the insignia on their collars. India was a British colony at the time, and there were Indian soldiers serving in the British Army. A number of these Indians were captured by the Nazis and made into POW’s. The Germans recruited some soldiers for their army from these POW’s. Some of these Indians may have been motivated by anti-colonial feelings towards the British.

This also lines up with the lunatic Nazi notion that they were going to reach India via their offensive in the Caucasus. They would conquer the Caucasus and move on to Iran and then to India, where they would set in motion and armed Indian rebellion against the British colonizers.

The Nazis had some respect for the Iranians and may have even considered them White (the name Iran comes from the word “Aryan”). Nazi race researchers had been running around India researching the Indian Caucasians in order to determine the origin of the Aryan Race. It’s not certain what the Nazis meant by “Aryan,” but I believe it meant the same thing as Indo-European. Yet Slavs were somehow not Indo-Europeans or Aryans? Whatever. Nazi race science never made much sense.

Indian troops serving in the Nazi Army. These are members of the Freies Indien (Free Indian) Division of the German Army

The next pic is really boss. This is a Nazi propaganda poster showing caricatures of evil Soviet troops raping and then murdering teenage German girls. Note that the girls are really almost prepubescent, maybe 12 years old. The blood in the pubic region is from the “pure” virgins being raped. Classic propaganda. Note that the Russians have a pronounced Asiatic look about them in order to make them appear to be non-Whites, while the German girls being raped and murdered are pure blond and blue “Aryans.”

In reality, Russians are probably only about 3-

Classic Nazi propaganda shows diabolical Asiatic Red Army troops raping and murdering 12 year old blond and blue pure "Aryan" virgin girls.

PC Gone Bonkers Episode #1,509,472

You’ve got to be kidding.

This must be a joke, right? I’m sorry if any Black person thinks this is a good idea. Blacks are turning into a nation of whining crybabies. Considering how tough and aggro Black culture and many Blacks are, this is ridiculous. It’s like you’ve got this tough, hardass guy covered with tattoos, and someone calls him a name and he starts breaking down in tears and crying for Mommy.

This is what I picture Black people doing nowadays.

Black America: “Mommy, mommy, I just heard an n-word! My ears hurt! Waaaaaaaa!!”

Black Mommy: “Oh, I’m sorry baby. Here’s some cotton for your poor hurt ears. It’s sad that these evil words even exist. Why can’t we just give these words a lethal injection so we Blacks can sleep in peace? Do you want to sleep with Mommy for the next few nights?”

Black America: “Yes, yes, Mommy! I’m afraid of the dark! The dark is Black, and Black is the same color as the n-word, so every time I see Black, I think of the n-word!”

Black Mommy: “I’m so sorry, Black America baby.” Rubs its soft, curly head.

“Blessed Art Thou Among Women,” by Alpha Unit

I don’t think that Mary was Black, but the Jews back then were just Middle Easterners. They didn’t have any Khazarian or European blood in them yet, as most Ashkenazim do nowadays. They probably looked something like the Mizrachi Jews do today. If you’ve ever met any Mizrachis, they are fairly dark people. They look sort of like Arabs.

I always found the Catholic religion quite impressive – not because of any real understanding of it but because of what I could see of it. And what I could see of it was quite mysterious and maybe a bit awe-inspiring, for someone used to the kind of plain religious services I grew up with. Unintelligible prayers. Incense. Sumptuous robes. Ornate crucifixes. I’m not Catholic, but even I kind of like watching the moment they announce a new Pope. Smoke and bells. Nothing like that at my old church!

Gregorian chants are something I actually enjoy listening to, but it’s the kind of thing that would have been creepy to me as a child. And nothing could have prepared me for the first time I saw images of the Nazarenos during a Holy Week celebration. Wait a minute, I thought. This looks awfully similar to some other regalia I’ve seen…

But something especially fascinating to me is the mystery of the Black Madonnas. Most people know about the Black Madonna – images of Mary in which she is shown with dark or sometimes black skin. Since these Black Madonnas are the creation of Europeans, there is speculation and dispute about their origin and significance.

These paintings and statues of Mary date from the 11th or 12th century and were produced throughout the medieval period. And while they have dark skin, they are recognizably European, Typically, those trying to explain this phenomenon state that the wood was naturally dark, in the case of some statues, or that the darkness was a result of color changes in paint over time.

So why did the skin tones alone change color over time?

The darkness is also attributed to candle soot, from the countless prayers offered to the Madonnas over the centuries. Again, though, why did the candle soot only affect the skin tones?

It is often stated that sometimes these Madonnas were cleaned for various reasons but then intentionally re-darkened to placate the faithful. This is one explanation as to why these European-looking Madonnas have black skin.

Besides the explanations attributed to physical factors, there are those that suggest that the darkness of the Madonnas is inspired by Scripture, particularly a portion of the Song of Songs: “I am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem…” Others suggest that the Black Madonna is a throwback to earlier depictions of earth goddesses, some of whom had been depicted as black, as they represented fertile soil.

Could it be that the color black represents the Primordial Darkness that gave birth to Light, or the archetypal Feminine? Some feminists think so.

In the view of some Afrocentrists, the Madonna is Black because she is based on the Egyptian goddess Isis, who had to have been Black because the ancient Egyptians were Black. To them, one of the most revered Christian symbols is yet another instance of Whites stealing and trying to pass off Black creativity as their own.

No one knows definitively why Europeans created Black Madonnas. To some of us, it almost doesn’t matter. They portray a powerful and venerated Blackness, and there is a lot to like about that.

"Blessed Art Thou Among Women," by Alpha Unit

I don’t think that Mary was Black, but the Jews back then were just Middle Easterners. They didn’t have any Khazarian or European blood in them yet, as most Ashkenazim do nowadays. They probably looked something like the Mizrachi Jews do today. If you’ve ever met any Mizrachis, they are fairly dark people. They look sort of like Arabs. I always found the Catholic religion quite impressive – not because of any real understanding of it but because of what I could see of it. And what I could see of it was quite mysterious and maybe a bit awe-inspiring, for someone used to the kind of plain religious services I grew up with. Unintelligible prayers. Incense. Sumptuous robes. Ornate crucifixes. I’m not Catholic, but even I kind of like watching the moment they announce a new Pope. Smoke and bells. Nothing like that at my old church! Gregorian chants are something I actually enjoy listening to, but it’s the kind of thing that would have been creepy to me as a child. And nothing could have prepared me for the first time I saw images of the Nazarenos during a Holy Week celebration. Wait a minute, I thought. This looks awfully similar to some other regalia I’ve seen… But something especially fascinating to me is the mystery of the Black Madonnas. Most people know about the Black Madonna – images of Mary in which she is shown with dark or sometimes black skin. Since these Black Madonnas are the creation of Europeans, there is speculation and dispute about their origin and significance. These paintings and statues of Mary date from the 11th or 12th century and were produced throughout the medieval period. And while they have dark skin, they are recognizably European, Typically, those trying to explain this phenomenon state that the wood was naturally dark, in the case of some statues, or that the darkness was a result of color changes in paint over time. So why did the skin tones alone change color over time? The darkness is also attributed to candle soot, from the countless prayers offered to the Madonnas over the centuries. Again, though, why did the candle soot only affect the skin tones? It is often stated that sometimes these Madonnas were cleaned for various reasons but then intentionally re-darkened to placate the faithful. This is one explanation as to why these European-looking Madonnas have black skin. Besides the explanations attributed to physical factors, there are those that suggest that the darkness of the Madonnas is inspired by Scripture, particularly a portion of the Song of Songs: “I am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem…” Others suggest that the Black Madonna is a throwback to earlier depictions of earth goddesses, some of whom had been depicted as black, as they represented fertile soil. Could it be that the color black represents the Primordial Darkness that gave birth to Light, or the archetypal Feminine? Some feminists think so. In the view of some Afrocentrists, the Madonna is Black because she is based on the Egyptian goddess Isis, who had to have been Black because the ancient Egyptians were Black. To them, one of the most revered Christian symbols is yet another instance of Whites stealing and trying to pass off Black creativity as their own. No one knows definitively why Europeans created Black Madonnas. To some of us, it almost doesn’t matter. They portray a powerful and venerated Blackness, and there is a lot to like about that.

Stupid Idea #743,592: Bringing Somali “Refugees” To America

Note: The PC freakazoids have accused this post, as usual, of racism. See here for my position statement on racism.

Read it and weep.

Whose bright idea was this anyway? When you’re stuck in a hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging. Bearing that in mind, why don’t we quit bringing these Somalis over to our country?

The Somalis are in Norway and Finland too. Same crap in those places. In those countries, immigrants, mostly Somalis, are committing up to 80-9

These Somalis have to be just about the worst immigrants on Earth. They come to the West and go straight to gangbanger, do not pass go, do not collect $200. We have enough problems with our own native feral humanoids. There’s no reason why we should be importing even more two-legged animals from overseas.

Why Are All Racists and Sexists Reactionaries?

This is something I don’t really understand.

Lots of Black people act bad. Before you say Whites do too, there’s way more bad Blacks actors than bad White actors, percentage-wise. Living in a poor all-White town was instructive, as was moving to a poor Hispanic town. It finally made me realize that this fucked-up behavior doesn’t have much to do with economics. Sure, there were idiots in the White town. But it seemed like in the Hispanic town there were 3 times more of them per capita, and the bad actors acted about 3 times worse than the White bad actors. Of course I’m guessing here, but that’s my perception.

I figure in a poor Black town, there will be 8-9 times more bad actors per capita, and I figure they will act 8-9 times worse than White bad actors.

So really it’s not a case of bad actors. Kids of every race act like shits. But to us Whites, it seems like the Hispanic and Black bad actors are way worse than our own and there’s way more of them to boot.

It’s pretty clear that once a White city turns Hispanic or Black, there’s a decline in all sorts of variables. It’s much worse in the case of a White city turning Black, and this process has been viewed in realtime by millions of Americans. As a general rule, the city turns into a crime and squalor ridden Hellhole.

Given these obvious facts, I really don’t understand why the only White racists are reactionaries. Aren’t there any White liberals who are tired of Blacks and Hispanics too?

And why are racists so reactionary in every other way, too? They usually hate all of modernity – modern art, modern literature, modern music, modern culture, recreational drugs, the Sexual Revolution, the works. I don’t get it. If you’re a racist, you don’t like to rock out, get high and fuck your brains out? Why not? Aren’t there White dopers, rockers and sex freaks that are tired of minorities too? Aren’t there any Whites who dig David Bowie, Thomas Pynchon, Marcel Duchamp and Picasso, yet can’t stand Blacks? If not, why not?

Why do most White racists support Israel? Because, Arabniggers being an inferior race and all, it was cool of the superior White Jews to steal their land, kill them and ruin their lives? Why was that an ok thing to do? Because one is a superior race and the other is an inferior race? Really? So the superior races just get to kill the inferior races, ruin their lives and steal their land, everywhere on Earth, simply due to their superiority? Is there anything that is not ok for the superior to do to the inferior?

Anyway, why, just based on religion or test scores of whatever, does one race get to deliberately fuck over another one anyway? On what basis? Superiority? If so, wow, what an appalling mindset!

I’ve noticed something else. Sexists are all reactionaries too. There are plenty of woman-hating sites all over the Net. They’re pretty entertaining, but they’re all reactionary. I don’t get it. Women are a pain in the ass, and lots of normal humans end up having had quite enough of them. Hell, I know women who don’t like women. Aren’t there any liberals who’ve had it up to here with female shenanigans too?

Racist and sexist ideology aside, the more you learn about racists and sexists, the less appealing racism and sexism is based, if not on ideology, then at least on the reactionary assholes who are attracted to it.

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